The Forgotten Power
by JoshB
Summary: HP/NT HONKS . This is a post-ootp fic containing a very independent and powerful/super Harry. There is a fair amount of bashing here. I don't really do angst, so dont expect much in this story. Reposted and officially on hold.
1. Author's Note

**Author's notes:**

This is an incomplete story I first began writing a bit over a year ago. Therefore it may seem very familiar to some of you…this is because it is a re-post. At this point I have what I am posting now (14 chapters I believe) and part of the next chapter (about 2 pages in word of it anyway).

I became very frustrated with this story as it was not going in the direction I wanted it to and I began to dislike it. As such, I deleted it all from the site and it's been sitting on my hard drive ever since and I had no intention of ever doing anything with it again. To those who were my loyal readers, I can only apologise for this.

Yesterday I got an email from a friend asking what ever happened to it and requesting that I either send them it or put it back up…so here it is.

At this moment in time, I'm not certain if I am going to restart it – but I may do so at some stage in the future…never say never after all. If there is enough demand for it and I can think of a direction to take it in then I could probably be convinced to continue (though probably with a bit of an edit to what's been done already).

This was my very first attempt at writing a story of any nature, so no matter how much I became frustrated with it, it will always be somewhat special to me because of that.

Please let me know what you think and if it is worth continuing or not.

I may also post some other stories/part stories at some stage in the not too distant future.

Thank you for reading.

**-Josh.**


	2. Return to the Dursleys'

Disclaimer: For those of you who didn't realise, I am not JKR, nor do I claim to be, as such I have no rights to any of the canon characters, places, events, themes, plot or anything else that you recognise, only the story line of this fic and any OCs I might include came from my tiny brain. I make no money from this no matter how much I wish I did. I hope this doesn't break any rules or anything (let me know if it does and I'll get rid of it) but since this follows directly on from OoTP I've included the last couple of lines at the start of this fic. I DO NOT OWN THIS PART, IT IS NOT MINE, EVERYONE BOW DOWN TO THE ALMIGHTY JKR AND HER BUNCH OF OVERPAID LAWYERS :p.

"…_he smiled, raised a hand in farewell, turned around and led the way out of the station towards the sunlit street, with Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and Dudley hurrying along in his wake."_

**Chapter One: Return to the Dursleys**

Once he was out of the station and out of sight of his friends and the other witches and wizards, who had been there to welcome them home from school for the summer, Harry Potter slowed his pace to allow his relatives to catch up as he had to admit he really had no idea where the Dursleys had parked their car.

Once he had loaded his school trunk and Hedwig's cage into the boot of the car, under close observation from his uncle of course (Vernon would never let his nephew do so by himself incase Harry were to scratch the paintwork), he climbed into the back seat next to his ridiculously overweight cousin and directly behind his equally whale like uncle, who was driving.

Now, Harry Potter had spent many years with the Dursleys and as such he knew that the silence following the confrontation at the train station was much too good to last. In his mind the only question was when the explosion from his uncle would occur.

Currently Vernon Dursley was a most hideous shade of red from his anger and was rapidly approaching purple which, as Harry knew, was incredibly dangerous as far as his immediate safety was concerned.

'_Why can't he just blow a few blood vessels…just this once?' Harry thought._

By this point the car had made it almost halfway through the journey back to Privet Drive in Surrey and for almost all of that time his aunt had been shooting him glares from the front seat, his uncle had been watching him in the rear view mirror more often than looking at the road and his cousin had been engaged in a most fruitless exercise trying to hide in the corner of the vehicle and keep as much distance between himself and his 'freak' cousin (most difficult considering he took up more than 2 thirds of the back seat by himself). Seeing this and recognising the fact that it would probably be best to get it over with before they arrived so his uncle would not be able to immediately beat him, Harry decided to head off his uncle and explain, _'Gryffindors charge ahead' after all_ he thought.

"Um…Uncle Vernon?" Harry asked nervously.

"What?" his uncle growled.

"I wanted to explain" he replied "those people back at the station…I had no idea they were going to do or say any of that, in fact I wish they hadn't. Please don't take notice of it, I'll write them the notes they wanted every few days to keep them happy and that should stop them from doing anything else and hopefully you won't have to have any more contact with them."

Harry sat and waited while Vernon considered this and was getting more and more nervous as every second passed until eventually his uncle replied "See that you do keep them bloody _freaks_ away from my house, boy. If they show up I'll make you pay, mark my words."

Harry took this as probably the best possible outcome, as a matter of fact, for his uncle that was positively polite so he simply muttered a quiet "yes sir" to which the older man merely grunted.

For the remainder of the trip he sat in silence, thinking back over the past year and considering all that had happened in the past few weeks. He had recently however come to the conclusion that the events in the Department of Mysteries were not entirely his fault, oh he knew that he held some of the blame for Sirius' death, but most of it could be assigned to Bellatrix for firing the spell, Voldemort for luring them there in the first place, Dumbledore for not informing Harry about the existence of the prophecy previously and a fair amount of blame was left over for Snape for not teaching him occlumency properly to prevent the dreams from happening. _Yes_, he thought, _defiantly enough blame to go around._

When they pulled up on the drive way of No.4 Privet Drive, Harry climbed out of the car and carried his possessions up to the smallest bedroom of the house where he was told to stay and that he would not be receiving a meal that evening.

"_and don't you even think of coming downstairs again until we call you in the morning to make our breakfast, boy!"_ his uncle had bellowed at his retreating form as he climbed the stairs, trunk and bird cage in hand.

Looking around his bedroom Harry discovered that everything was pretty much as he had expected, the room hadn't been cleaned since he had been there last (probably the only one in the house not cleaned at least twice a day by his cleaning obsessed aunt) and the pile of broken items and unread books courtesy of his _favourite_ cousin had grown slightly in his absence, otherwise it remained unchanged.

Harry unpacked his clothes, books and school supplies, placed Hedwig's cage, open, on a small table near the open window and placed some water and owl treats inside for when his friend arrived as he had released her prior to leaving the train (owls in cages not being overly common in the middle of muggle London and him knowing that while with his relatives he was not to do anything that could be considered _abnormal_).

Once these basic tasks were completed Harry was fairly tired from the long day and decided to get an early night so he stripped down to his underwear and climbed into his bed, where he fell asleep almost instantly.


	3. Number 4

**Chapter 2: Number 4**

The next morning when Harry awoke, it was to the sound of his aunt screeching up the stairs that it was time for him to get up and start cooking. As he was dragging himself out of bed and pulling on his dressing gown Harry privately wondered, not for the first time, if his aunt was related to a banshee.

Deciding that asking her this was probably not a good idea at this time, Harry descended the stairs and started cooking the mountains of sausages, bacon, toast, eggs, beans, fried bread, hash browns and various other foods that made up the average Dursley breakfast since it seemed that Dudley's diet had been entirely abandoned at some stage during the year. Once he had finished cooking and serving said food and again being amazed that the kitchen table was actually capable of not collapsing under all that weight he took his own breakfast (a single half slice of toast) and sat down at the opposite end of the table to his aunt, who then began listing chores for the day. In this instance Harry was to load the dishwasher, clean the kitchen floor, vacuum down the stairs, dust the ornaments downstairs, clean the bathroom, wash the windows and weed the flowerbeds. On the other hand Dudley was to tidy his room if he got the chance before he went to have tea with one of his friends. If Harry noticed the difference in work load, or knew that his cousin would in fact be standing on a street corner with his gang, terrorising the local kids while selling and/or taking vast quantities of drugs, he wisely chose not to say anything, instead returned upstairs.

Once in his room he briefly stroked Hedwig, who had returned during the night, while refilling her supply of owl treats before collecting a change of clothes and heading for the bathroom to have a shower and then going downstairs and beginning the tedious workload assigned by his aunt.

By mid afternoon Harry had completed the majority of the chores and decided to take a break to look at what school work needed to be done over the holidays.

As Harry had just completed his fifth year of schooling and was awaiting his O.W.L. results at this point he could only do work for the few classes that he knew he was guaranteed a passing grade in, as he saw no point in preparing for a class he would not be allowed to take. In his case this meant he only had his defence, transfiguration and charms assignments to be working on for now so he began collecting his notes for them.

Once this was completed he then went and finished his chores for the day and was then confined to his room once again with no food further than the toast in the morning.

Thus continued Harry Potter's confinement at the Dursleys' house, in the mornings he did housework, in the afternoons he studied and then did more housework, occasionally he would be permitted to have a meal (well, table scraps anyway) and then in the evenings he would sit in his room either thinking about the past or trying to plan for his future. During these evening thinking sessions, Harry reached one inevitable conclusion, he realised that the Order of the Phoenix was pretty much useless and that he would not be receiving any help or training from that quarter beyond a standard Hogwarts education…._alright for most_ Harry thought _but then most people don't have a damn prophecy saying that they have to kill or be killed by the most feared Dark Lord in living memory, and turning furniture into farm animals or tending dangerous plants really isn't going to help me win against Tommy boy anytime soon._

But, as always Harry was stuck in privet drive for the summer or until Dumbledore decided to spring him from his prison this time.

Dumbledore….there was another sore point for Harry. Yes, in all of his time to contemplate things, Harry Potter had come to a conclusion. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Order of Merlin First Class, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, Supreme Mugwump, Headmaster of Hogwarts, leader of the Order and hero of the light was in fact nothing more than a manipulative, self-serving, egotistical fraud who actually did very little other than sit on his backside and watch other people take action. But Harry also realised that at that point in time there was bugger all he could do about it.


	4. Tonks

**Chapter 3: Tonks**

Life on privet drive continued in this manner for the first 2 weeks of Harry's enforced stay. On the second Saturday after his return Harry managed to complete his assigned tasks by early afternoon and decided to spend the remainder of the day in the park nearby as it was a sunny day out, so he walked into the park and across to a tree to sit in the shade for a while.

This is when Harry heard the sound of someone in the nearby bushes tripping over. Now considering he could plainly see there was no one there, this left only one possibility, the person was currently invisible.

"Show yourself" he said while pointing his wand into the general area of his stalker.

It was at this point that a rather sheepish looking Nymphadora Tonks, complete with florescent pink spiky hair, walked out of the bushes carrying an invisibility cloak.

"Wotcher Harry, mind pointing that elsewhere, unless ya plan on using it for something?" called the young auror while grinning at him.

Seeing who it was, Harry relaxed somewhat and shoved his wand back in his pocket.

"Hi Tonks, don't sneak up on people like that. What are you doing here anyway?" he asked curiously while sitting back down.

"Why guarding you of course" she replied, bouncing over to sit near him "orders from the Dumble man."

"So I've still got a 24 hour guard?" he asked, getting slightly irritated.

"Yup, I do days, Dung Fletcher does nights….well, Dung's meant to do nights anyway…what he actually does is anyone's guess." She replied cheekily, either missing or totally ignoring the look on the young man's face.

Realising that there was no point in arguing with her about it and that she was only doing as instructed, Harry relaxed and said "Ok, well, I don't particularly like it but if you have to be here will you at least lose the cloak while I'm out here…gives me someone to talk to besides the bloody Dursleys"

"sure, that sounds alright…we have actually been told not to, because Albus thinks you need time to yourself to heal after the DoM stuff but then, rules are made to have exceptions, right?"

"Right." He said now smiling at her, and actually thankful for the presence of the fun young woman next to him as it made a welcome change to talk to someone who treated him as an equal…even as a human being was a massive improvement. "So, can you tell me anything about whats been happening while I've been out of contact with the world?"

"Not really" she replied, then seeing the darkening look on his face continued "what I meant to say is that as far as I know nothing worth mentioning has been happening…there's some pressure on Fudge to either change his attitude or get out of office but I think you already knew that…the order has had a few meetings discussing what you guys did at the ministry…" she trailed off hearing him snort with suppressed laughter, "what's so funny mister?"

"Tonks, don't take this the wrong way, but what does the order actually do, besides have meetings in which you all agree that everything is going wrong and decide to have another meeting?"

Momentarily stunned that someone would actually ask that question, much less ask _her_ that question, Tonks just stared at him thinking about what he'd just said and realised that every word of it was true, all they did was have meetings and occasionally react to a crisis if they heard about it, by which time it was usually too late to do anything but clean up…in all honesty the only thing they really seemed to _do_ on a regular basis was guard duty at various locations which were important for totally unknown reasons. Then remembering that Harry had actually asked her a question and was probably waiting and expecting some form of answer, she decided to tell him the truth.

"To be honest Harry, I've never thought of it that way before, but now that you mention it, that is about all we seem to do. The main reason I joined the order was that it was pretty much the only organisation that seemed to be doing anything in this war, but now that I've actually been in it a while, I guess I'm beginning to realise that it's not all it was cracked up to be." She said sounding some what distant and looking thoughtful.

Though Harry had personally known this to be pretty much the truth for some time now, he had not expected someone like Tonks, someone who was actually a part of it, to see it the same way, much less admitting it to him.

Though she had no way of knowing it, in that moment of absolute honesty, she had forced Harry to revaluate his opinion of the young auror beside him. He had assumed that she was just another one of Dumbledore's puppets, a willing pawn in his manipulations. But now he realised that she was in fact a person who truly wanted to do something to make the world a better place and was merely lured in by promises that she could do that as part of the order…promises that apparently were not fulfilled. Yes, all in all Harry now had a much higher opinion of her indeed.

While Harry was thinking this, Tonks was also analyzing several things that she had taken for granted mere minutes ago. Until now everything was clear, Dumbledore was everything that was good in the world, the order was the only thing doing anything about You-Know-Who, Harry Potter was nothing more than a little boy who was famous and needed protecting because he had an uncanny ability to get into trouble of all kinds at a moments notice and she had also believed that she was doing everything she could to help the world and the side of the Light emerge victorious from this new war. These were all grand notions that she desperately wanted to cling to, but a single comment from young Harry changed that and shook her to her core. The order was just as useless as the ministry all things considered, Dumbledore was all talk and no action and Harry…..Tonks was intrigued by the young man, he seemed to understand things that other people simply missed, and if she was honest, him and his friends had taken down more death eaters and seen more action than most of the order and a fair few of the aurors put together. Beyond that, on a more personal level, she realised she wanted to get to know him better. She'd always thought him kinda cute and now she was beginning to see that he was a nice person as well, even looking beyond the fame….._yes_ she thought_ very interesting indeed…if he was a couple of years older I might just be interested in something a bit more than a chat….then again, he's not that much younger…I'll get to know him a bit better first and then just see how it goes…defiantly wouldn't mind having a go with him, even if it was just a summer fling if I'm honest with myself._ At this point, Tonks realised that she had been sitting there with a goofy grin on her face and staring off into the distance for several minutes and rapidly decided to change the subject. "Anyway Harry, what've you been up to since school finished?"

"Oh, nothing much really, just been doing chores and homework and stuff like that…pretty boring really. Don't even have anyone to talk to back there really." He casually replied.

"Ok, if you either don't want to or if I'm way off in my ideas just tell me to back off and it's the last you'll hear of it. But, the way I see it, this war, it's probably gonna be you that gets left to deal with old snakeface, right?"

"Errm….yeah"

"And no one has actually bothered showing you anything outside of normal school stuff have they?" she continued.

"Not a thing." He said slowly, not quite seeing what she was getting at.

"Well, I know it's not much, and you'll probably need to know waaaay more before you're ready for that sorta thing but, if you want I can teach you some of the more advanced defence stuff…I mean what I learned at the Auror Academy. If you want that is?"

Hearing this, Harry was momentarily speechless; here was someone, a trained fighter, willing to actually spend time showing him some of the things he needed to know. From his perspective this would be the answer to the problem he'd been working on for days about what to do for training. "If you're willing to do that then yeah I defiantly want to. I really appreciate the offer."

"ok, well we'll start tomorrow, then. We're gonna have to do this at you relative's place and I'll have to keep it quiet from the Old Man 'cos he's forbidden us from doing this, but the way I see it you need it really…and like I said earlier-all rules have exceptions." She finished with a grin.

"Sounds fine with me. The Dursleys will probably not be too happy about this, so be prepared to stun them if you need to. And I have no problem keeping things from Dumbledore, as it seems that he's been keeping things from me and I think its about time I did the same."

They chatted for a while longer, agreeing to meet the following morning to begin training as well as discussing more mundane topics. Before long it was early evening and time for Harry to return to Privet Drive (the Dursleys needed their private chef – who wouldn't with the amount Dudley eats after all?). When they reached the front lawn of #4 Tonks promised to be there bright and early to see what good they could do with improving his skills in the time available and threw her invisibility cloak back on leaving Harry to return inside.

When Harry entered the house, he was feeling better than he had in a long while, he'd finally felt like he'd started making progress towards his goals and had had some pleasant company too. He was feeling better that is until he came face to face with an angry Uncle Vernon bellowing something about "boy" "cook" "food" and someone or other being "ungreatful"…he really had learned to tune most of Vernon Dursley's rants out years ago, but from the sounds of it, Harry had been correct in his assumption that it was feeding time at the zoo and the giraffe, hippopotamus and the whale were very much hungry…_oh well _ he thought _it was a nice day while it lasted._

Later that night, once the Dursleys were asleep, Harry considered what he was going to be doing the following day. He was very much excited at the opportunity. As he himself began to succumb to sleep a voice in the back of his mind quietly questioned if that excitement was more for what he would be learning, or who it was that would be teaching him. But before he could consider this he had drifted off into sleep, dreaming of pink haired witches and other, much more normal things for someone his age than was normal for Harry Potter.

When Harry awoke, the following morning, it was to the usual sound of a shouting relative. The only unusual thing was this time it was his uncle, not his aunt that was doing the shouting so Harry scrambled out of bed and into some clothes before running downstairs to see what his uncle wanted…only to stop dead on the bottom step.

"Wotcher Harry! He always this charming?" called Tonks cheerfully from the doorway, jabbing a finger in Vernon's direction.

"Hiya Tonks." he replied "yeah, I would say this seems about normal. Good morning Uncle Vernon, I trust you remember Tonks from the train station the other week, yes? Well don't worry, she's not here to hex you…this time, she's here to help me with something. She's likely to be visiting fairly frequently, but don't worry, we'll keep out of your way, you won't even see us….right Tonks?"

"Right!" she said cheekily as she pushed past the immense bulk of the man before her, walking into the house and throwing her invisibility cloak on. "You won't see us at all."

While his uncle spluttered some nonsense, Harry inwardly cringed, knowing that magic jokes really would not go down well with the Dursleys. "Ok Tonks, this way" he said, leading her back up to his room, all the while hoping that Vernon would remember she was an adult witch and therefore not someone he should be starting a fight with. He let out a breath he didn't realise he had been holding when they were safely in his room and the door was shut behind him.

"Sorry about the scene down there Harry, guess I could have at least made an effort to look more 'respectable' for the muggles" she said while screwing up her face as if the mere thought of doing so left a disgusting taste in her mouth.

"Don't worry about it Tonks. Anyway, can I get you anything before we start?"

"Nah, I'm good ta. Had summert before I came over this morning."

"Ok, well what exactly are we going to be doing?"

"Hmm…you've got a girl alone in your room and you wanna know what you should be doing? Interesting…" She teased.

Harry, blushing madly, stammered for a few seconds before getting control of himself again and saying "What I meant was, how exactly are we going to be learning magic, considering the fact that I'm underage and can't actually _do_ magic right now?"

"aww…way to ruin a girl's hopes there Harry" she joked, "but seriously, yeah, I thought about that problem and you see that's one of the great things about being an Auror, pretty quick people in the ministry start owing you favours for turning a blind eye every so often so it means when you need something they pretty much bend over backwards to help. For example, if a normal person were to apply for a temporary exemption permit to the underage magic rule then it would take about 2 months for the application to be processed…when I went and asked last night, it took 5 minutes. Here ya go." She said while handing him a piece of parchment.

Harry looked at it and saw that it was a signed form stating that Harry James Potter was permitted to use magic at his own discretion for the duration of the summer, and was signed by Mafalda Hopkirk of the Improper Use of Magic Office at the ministry. "wow, thanks Tonks. Well I guess that explains that part at least" he said grinning widely, thinking that for once he was getting something signed by Madam Hopkirk that was actually welcome.

"Yeah, now then, since you've obviously just got up why don't you go grab a quick shower before we start? I'll cast a few quick spells to give us a bit more room to work with and maybe transfigure some of this crap into decent furniture for you after…that is unless you want me to come scrub your back…or any other bits you have in mind?" she said with a teasing smile, only half joking.

"Umm…No thanks Tonks, I'll pass this time, but the furniture would be most welcome if you don't mind." He replied while grabbing a change of clothes and heading for the shower, while thinking how fun it could actually be to share a shower with the attractive young witch before him.

Once he had left the room, Tonks looked around, pulled out her wand and began making changes to Harry's room. First, she vanished the piles of old broken toys and other junk before casting a permanent expansion charm on the room, making what was formerly the smallest bedroom in the house into by far the largest, infact it was close to the size that the entire upper floor of the Dursley property should normally be. Once that was completed she began with the furniture. The old cot bed that was practically falling apart, became a four poster similar to the ones from the Hogwarts dorms, only in this case, king size instead of single. The bookcase that only actually had one self as the others had broken was repaired and enlarged, after which she expanded the collection of books she had brought with her and placed them there along with his school texts from previous years. And on she continued.

Fifteen minutes later when Harry returned from the bathroom, it was to a room that he did not recognise.

"wha'd'ya think?" Tonks asked.

"Wow." Was his articulate response.

"Glad you like it. I've also bought us some peace and quiet with some muggle repelling charms on the door. Honestly I don't know how you put up with them gits."

"Neither do I." he joked.

"Right well this is sweet and all but we're really not getting anywhere so park your backside and we'll go through the basics. I thought the best start would probably be for me to find out what you already know and go from there."

For the next thirty minutes they talked about the various things Harry had learned in defence against the dark arts at school over the previous five years, and to say that Tonks was appalled by the level of tuition was some what an understatement.

"who've you had for defence professors? They sound like useless bastards to me."

Harry chuckled slightly, "you've no idea. Lets see, First year I had Professor Quirell, who was a stuttering idiot, but knew a fair bit of the subject, unfortunate drawback was that he had Voldemort sticking out the back of his head hidden under his turban so I ended up killing him. Second year we had Gilderoy Lockheart, who was a complete fraud and talked more about hair care than defence, he tried wiping mine and Ron's memories blank but unfortunately for him he was using a damaged wand so the obliviate backfired, he's currently in St. Mungos for the rest of his life I believe. Third year, we had Remus Lupin, who was an excellent teacher, but he focused more on the defence against dark creature aspect which while being fine isn't what I need in this case…well unless you count Voldie as a dark creature, which I guess would be right. Fourth year we were supposed to have Mad-Eye Moody but instead we got Barty Crouch Jr. polyjuiced to look like him, but he did actually teach us some pretty good stuff considering he was a Death Eater. Last year we had Umbridge, who was an evil toad and who's idea of teaching was to assign pages from a book and we weren't allowed to do any practical work. So, all in all it's pretty amazing that any of us know which way to point the wand, nevermind how to actually curse someone."

Tonks was absolutely speechless after that. It was common knowledge that the defence teaching had been a bit fragmented lately but she hadn't realised it was _that_ bad. "What the hell was Albus thinking hiring half that lot?" She wondered aloud.

"In all fairness Umbitch wasn't his call, he couldn't find anyone for the job so Fudge muscled in and appointed someone. Her main purpose was to spy on everyone, not to teach."

"Harry, love with all due respect you don't know what you're talking about, when Albus mentioned that he was looking for candidates he had offers to fill the post from about 15 people in the Order, including me, and half of us were either current or retired Aurors."

"Well that just goes to show that what I've been thinking lately is true. Dumbles does what's best for him and doesn't really give a damn if others get trampled under the guise of his master plan."

"I hate to admit it Harry, but I think you might have the long and short of it there. Anyway, back to more immediate concerns, I'm gonna conjure a training dummy for you and I want you to hit it with all the offensive spells you know, so I can see what you can do and get an idea of your power levels and accuracy and all that."

She pulled out her wand and did just that, and for the next 15 minutes Harry hit the target with everything he had. While he was doing this, Tonks was suitably impressed by his aim which would put most trained Hit-Wizards to shame, however she noticed something a bit unusual, Harry was beginning to glow. After a few minutes she realised it wasn't just a glow, Harry had a visible aura, now she was truly impressed, hardly anyone could do that, much less hold it while casting repeatedly! But then she thought about it, if he was focussing hard enough to do that then his power levels should be through the roof, yet he was only actually displaying average strength…this struck her as odd, in fact, to her knowledge, it was impossible…unless…

"Harry stop for a minute will you?" she called to him and he came back over to sit down again. "do you have any blocks on you magic?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, as far as he knew magic couldn't be blocked.

"Sometimes for various reasons, some of a child's power can be like shut off, there's a whole group of spells for limiting the amount of magic a person has available. From the way you were casting it seems likely that you might have one…since you parents weren't around when you started school, chances are no one would know that it had been applied since they're usually done within the first 2 years of your life. Would you let me run the test to check if you do or not? It could significantly improve your casting if one is removed."

"I had no idea you could do that. But I guess like you said, with my parents being dead, any that they might have done to stop me hurting myself with accidental magic and stuff might still be there since no one thought to look. Yeah, if it's not too much trouble can you test me for it?"

"'Course I can. Grab me your cauldron and potion supplies, it only takes a few minutes to prepare it."

Ten minutes later Tonks had successfully brewed the revealing potion for him. "Ok, that's about it, now we just need a drop of your blood and a piece of parchment." Harry made a slight cut on the end of his finger and allowed a drop of his blood to fall into the potion, then Tonks dropped the parchment in "the colours that the parchment goes show what if any blocks are there."

"ok, that's a lot of colours, what the hell do they all mean?"

"Wow, you really must be powerful, most people wouldn't even be able to shoot sparks with all these ones!" she exclaimed "lets see, you've got red, that's a major block on your magical core, I'd say its probably shutting off about 3 quarters of your raw power. You've got green, that's a block on all natural mind arts, so that'd be occlumency, legilimency and telepathy, judging from the size of it you've probably got all 3. There's purple, that's a natural healing talent for self and others. Blue is blocking animagus transformations. Wow, I've never seen that before, this is supposed to be impossible….you have a gold block, that means you're a natural elemental, the last one of them died over 600 years ago. And one more" at this point she squealed so loudly Harry thought he might go deaf.

"What?"

"I never thought I'd meet another!" she exclaimed, bouncing around the room.

By this point Harry was getting a bit fed up so he hit her with a stinging hex to the rear end, which quickly made her slow down a bit.

"Ok, now do you want to tell me what's got you so excited?"

"Harry, it's amazing, you're a metamorph, like me!"

"Wow, that could be pretty useful. Ok so, now that you've rejoined me in the land of the sane, how do we go about getting rid of all these blocks?"

"I'll have you know I've never been sane mister!" she said, poking her tongue out at him "I can remove them for you but you'll need a couple of hours sleep afterwards."

"ok, would it be alright for us to do that now? I'd kinda like to know how much difference it will really make."

"yeah, sure, while your asleep I'll start thinking about what we can do…I have to say, when I offered to train you I didn't quite have this level of training in mind, but if you've got all these newly released abilities then the first thing we're gonna have to work on is helping you control them properly. If we have time afterwards then we can carry on and do as I was thinking of before with the new spells and stuff but this is _way_ more important."

"Ok Tonks, calm down, what do I need to do?"

"Get into bed, I'll do the rest."

While doing as he was told, Harry couldn't resist the chance to tease her a little. "That sounds like an offer worth thinking about, but can we take care of these block things first?"

Caught off guard at first Tonks took a moment to regain her composure before replying. "oh well, I suppose if that's what you wanna do then that's ok too." She winked at him. "No, seriously, this will probably drain you for a couple of hours, its best to lay down first so that you don't fall over."

"Why? Is that your job?" he asked grinning at her.

She poked him in the side. "Oi! Less cheek from you me thinks unless you want me to jinx you while you're asleep" she said indignantly.

He settled down and she pointed her wand at him making a series of highly complex wand movements and muttering strings of what Harry assumed was latin, but he couldn't hear clearly enough to tell for sure. Harry was bathed in a bright multi-coloured light and then all he knew was darkness.

Tonks completed the series of spells necessary for her task and as soon as she was done was literally knocked off her feet by the wave of raw magical power being released by the young man on the bed. _Wow _she thought _I've never felt power like that before, not even from Dumbledore._

Once she had recovered she went and sat at the desk and began scribbling a rough outline of what she wanted to do each day with Harry. The areas to work on included:

Physical conditioning

Occlumency

Legilimency

Metamorphmagus training

Controlling the level of power behind a spell

Wandless magic

Basic combat training

And any other things that they decided to add on at a later date, if there was time. She considered the options and decided that really the only way to help Harry learn to control his elemental abilities would be to get him a book on the subject as she really had no clue how to use them.

Approximately two and a half hours later Harry Potter began to wake up on the bed. At first he was confused as this really didn't feel like his bed, then his memories of that morning came flooding back. When he sat up he received a shock, he could see perfectly, better than he usually could and he hadn't even put his glasses on!

He looked around the room and spotted Tonks on one of the chairs.

"Hi Tonks."

"Hey Harry, how you feeling?" she called over.

"Confused" he replied, "any idea how I can see perfectly when I haven't even got my glasses on?"

Tonks thought for a moment. "That's probably one of the results of that natural healing ability thing you had blocked, you'll likely be getting little enhancements like that for a couple of days…old injuries and scars fading, muscle tone improving, likely a growth spurt…that sorta thing."

"Oh. Ok then." He said simply as he walked over to sit opposite her, behind the desk.

"Listen, Tonks, before we start any more training I've gotta ask you something. How good are you at occlumency?"

"Well, I'm not excellent at it but I can hold my own most of the time, why?"

Harry contemplated what he was about to do, and decided that if she was going to be helping him then she had a right to know what she was getting herself in for. "There's something I think you should know about, and I doubt Dumbledore has told the order any of it so I guess I should, at least with you, if we're gonna be working together. Do you have access to a penseive?"

"Yeah, all Aurors are required to carry one at all times so we can easily provide undisputable evidence of any crimes. Here." She said while pulling a shrunken one from her pocket and expanding it.

Harry closed his eyes and extracted the memory he wanted and placed it in. Before he began the playback he explained. "You know that prophecy, the one the order was guarding and that Voldemort went to the ministry to get?" at her nod, he continued "Well it was about me and him, this is what it says." He said as he tapped the surface of the silvery thought with his wand, causing the ghostly image of his divination professor to rise out of the bowl and begin speaking the words that were forever burned into his soul that night in Dumbledore's office.

Once the playback had completed Harry returned it to his head and said to a speechless Tonks "that prophesy was make to Dumbledore about 2 months before I was born. He chose to lock me in his office that night after I'd just been injured and watched someone I cared about die and tell me then that the fate of the world is currently squarely on my shoulders."

"harry…I don't know what I can do to help you, but anything at all that you need, please just ask and I'll do my best. Over the time available I will train you as best I can in as much as I can. I promise you I will do whatever it takes to see you come out of this whole thing alive."

There was a moment of silence in which Harry truly appreciated the efforts Tonks was making on his behalf, and there was no need to verbally thank her as it showed on his face how much it meant to him.

After a moment Tonks asked "It mentioned a power of some sort. Any ideas what it is?"

"Nope. Dumbles claims that it's love…but unless he's expecting me to snog Voldemort to death, I really don't see how that one's gonna work."

Tonks cringed at the mental imagery there and said "No, personally I've always thought he treated sanity as something to take or leave…and I think he left it a while ago."

"You're not wrong about that. Anyway, onto less depressing topics. What've you come up with for training ideas?"

For the next few hours they discussed Tonks' suggestions for their summer schedule. Before they knew it, it was time for Tonks to be leaving, but before she did, she set him a task for the night.

"Harry, I don't know if you've done anything like this before but I want you to practice some wandless magic tonight, see what you can do, just use your body to focus it instead of your wand. Ok?"

"Ok, Tonks, I'll see you tomorrow then."

At this she picked up her invisibility cloak and left the room and the house.

Harry sat for a while longer considering all the radical changes that had occurred in the past few hours. When he woke up this morning he was just an average wizard with a famous name and an impossible destiny, now, not even twelve hours later he was a seriously powerful wizard with more magic than he knew what to do with and more special abilities than anyone he'd ever met, some of which he's never even thought possible.

After a while, this line of thought began to give him a headache, so he decided to practice as Tonks had recommended.

He decided that simple spells were probably best, so that if he didn't have the right control over them wandlessly he wouldn't do too much damage, so he grabbed his first year charms textbook and began with a light spell.

Harry focussed for an entire minute on this, simplest of spells and all of a sudden he felt a surge of magic through his body and a small globe of light, about the size of a tennis ball but brighter than a car headlight was floating above his right palm.

_Wow _he thought _this isn't as hard as I thought it would be._

He continued on for another couple of hours relearning how to do magic without a wand. And in this time he discovered that rather than focussing on the spell, he should focus on the end result-don't think about levitating an object, focus on it being in the air, don't think about making an object move, imagine it already moving. That sort of thing.

Using this process over the hours, Harry learned a selection of spells from his different classes from various years, focusing solely on ones he thought might be useful. By the end of his two hours, Harry was once more exhausted as it had been hard work at first to get started, but he had defiantly made progress with about 25 spells learned and now only taking a second to focus sufficiently to use them.

Knowing that tomorrow would be a tiring day as well Harry decided that it was about time to go to bed. He scribbled a note saying that he was fine and sent it with Hedwig to Grimauld Place, stripped out of his clothes and crawled into bed.


	5. Metamorph Training and Occlumency

**Chapter 4: Metamorph Training and Occlumency**

The next morning when he woke up Harry went and got a shower straight away then returned to his room just in time for Tonks to arrive, this time she apparated straight in to save confrontation with the Dursleys.

"Morning Tonks"

"G-g-good mornin' Harry" she yawned "'scuse me, had a late night dealing with paperwork."

He laughed "Don't worry about it. So, where do you want to start today?"

"I was thinking maybe make a start on your morphing, because that's something I've had loads of experience with, and it doesn't need me to think much this early in the morning. But first, show me how you got on with the wandless stuff."

So for the next few minutes Harry stood there demonstrating his new skills, not realising how shocked Tonks was.

"Harry" she said when he finished "I was expecting you to maybe get one or two spells at best, and I didn't expect you to do wordless for years…what you've just done would take most people a lifetime to master…I don't think even Dumbledore can do that much and he's the best without a wand that I know of." She finished in awe of the young man before her.

"But it came easily; once I worked out how to do the basics I had no problem transferring that to other spells."

"Ok, well at some point I might just have to get you to teach me how you did it. Anyway, what do you know about metamorphing?"

"umm…basically only what I've seen you do, changing hair colour and length, eye colour, height, build, skin tone…but I've no idea how you actually do it."

"Ok, well first thing you need to know is that you can theoretically change any part of your body…second thing you need to know is that it has to be done _very_ carefully, personally I wouldn't recommend doing anything to alter your internal organs as that can get messy…and by messy I mean if you screw it up it can kill you, so I've never even tried that. Also there are different types of metamorph, I'm the rarest type in that I can do full body changes, so don't be too upset if you can only do a couple of things.

"When attempting a transformation, what you do is focus on an image of what you want the body part to look like once you're done, then force your magic to flow through your body. Does that make sense?"

Harry thought about all that for a moment before answering, "I think so."

"Ok well you'll get the hang of it after a while. Now, let's make a start. I want you to focus on having hair down to your shoulders. Hair growth is one of the most common things to be able to control."

Harry closed his eyes and was deep in thought for a couple of seconds, clinging to the image of the longer hair in his mind, until he felt it start to grow out, slowly at first then gradually quicker.

Tonks squealed and grabbed him into a hug. "Great job, Harry. Now try changing the colour."

He focused again and almost instantly his hair began to lighten off and became electric blue.

"Wow, this isn't as hard as I thought it would be" he commented.

"Yeah, it's one of those things that if you have the ability then all you need is a little bit of practice and the simple things like this become almost second nature, but it's not hard to get started. I learned at a similar rate with this."

"Ok, what next?"

"Change your eye colour"

He did that, just as easily as the previous tasks. "Ok now change it all back to your natural form."

Once Harry was back as himself Tonks hugged him again and kissed him on the cheek. "This is great Harry; I've never known anyone else even able to do this much before."

When she released him, Harry was somewhat disappointed; he rather liked having her body pressed against him like that.

"umm…right well I don't know how you'll feel about the next bit" began Tonks "in order to do any changes to other parts of your body its essential to understand how all the muscles connect together with all the various parts and how the bones connect and everything….there are two ways to do that, and I don't mind which one you'd prefer. Either you spend a few weeks or months studying human anatomy from books and stuff or you take the…errm…hands on approach, I guess you could say."

"Ok well I rarely learn properly from books so what's this other method you're talking about?"

"ok, promise not to freak out here" at his nod she continued "basically amounts to a full body massage while explaining the different parts to you as I go, then you do the same to me repeating the process yourself to help it stick in. I know it could be a bit embarrassing for you, but realistically it is the best way to learn."

"Ok, I'm obviously missing something…what's embarrassing about it?"

"Well I did say _full_ body massage, and I really did mean absolutely everything so it kinda has to be done without any clothes on." She finished quietly.

Blushing madly Harry stammered out "This is really the best way? You're not winding me up or something?"

"It really is the best way, I wish I'd had the chance for this method, I had to do it the long way."

"Ok then, so long as this stays just between us I guess it's ok." He said after thinking about it for a minute.

Tonks conjured a low massage table in the middle of the room and began undressing. Once she was down to her underwear she realised that Harry was just standing there staring at her "come on, are you gonna take that lot off? Or do you need a hand?" she joked. He quickly began to get rid of his clothes until he was down to just his boxers by which time Tonks, in her natural form, was standing naked before him. "Don't be shy Harry; any reactions you have are totally normal."

With this he shed his last piece of clothing revealing that he was very turned on by the sight before him and Tonks had to stifle a gasp at his size. "Ok climb up on the table and lay on your front" she directed. When he complied she climbed on top of him, straddling his waist and began running her hands over various points on his shoulders and upper back and mentioning the key aspects to him.

Truth be told, Harry was doing his best to concentrate on her words, but every so often he got distracted by the fact that he had an extremely beautiful woman sitting on top of him and every time she moved he could feel her moist pussy rubbing against his back…a most pleasant experience, he had to admit.

Over the next 10 minutes or so Tonks progressed steadily down his back, and on to his legs then the bottom of his feet, explaining the various features of the internal workings he would have to bear in mind should he choose to transform any of them.

Then it was time for Harry to turn over at which point he was highly embarrassed and felt very exposed laying there before her, naked, and fully hard in all his nine and a half inch glory. This was not helped when Tonks began working down his chest and stomach, continuing to explain his inner workings while rubbing every inch of his body. On the other hand, when she reached his middle, in a way he was disappointed that she went straight to his legs, missing everything in between.

However once she had reached his feet again, Tonks began working up the inside of his legs this time as opposed to the outside and when she reached the top, showed no signs of stopping. She grasped his cock and began tracing all of the muscles and blood vessels and other components he would need to expand, all the time outwardly maintaining a very clinical demeanour with the exception of her final comment "so that's what you'd need to watch out for if you grew this any bigger….not that you'd need to with one this size", which made him blush even deeper than he had been through out this entire process and it was taking every shred of his being to actually take in all of what she was saying while at the same time trying to prevent what could be a rather embarrassing and messy end to the lesson.

When Tonks had successfully explained every part of the operation of his body they switched places, and if possible Harry became even more nervous than he was before.

"Come on Harry, its ok, jut do the same as I did, this way you can actually feel all of the muscles and stuff that you probably can't reach on your own body."

So Harry climbed carefully on top of Tonks and that's when they realised a slight problem. Harry was still hard and therefore poking her in the backside every time he reached forward. To which she decided to solve the problem by reaching round, taking hold of his shaft and sliding it down between her thighs, running right next to and directly parallel to her pussy. "It's ok Harry, so long as you don't decide to take advantage of this and 'accidentally slip' into me, I really don't mind. Besides, it doesn't exactly feel bad for me either." She finished jokingly, trying to alleviate some of his nervousness.

So Harry began, repeating what Tonks had done to him, delighting in the feel of her skin beneath his hands and only making the occasional mistake in what he was saying.

He carried on, down her back, onto her tight ass and down along the back of her legs. Next she rolled over and he began again at her shoulders and down onto her upper chest before making eye contact with her, at which point she prompted "its alright, feel them, that way if you ever decide to hide as a female you'd know what you need to copy." So he squeezed and kneaded her breasts gently, feeling the consistency and becoming more and more aroused every second, before remembering what he was actually meant to be doing and continuing on down, over her taut stomach, onto her hips, down her legs and feet, when he got perhaps the biggest shock of the day so far, she spread her legs wide so one was off each edge of the table and displayed herself openly to him before taking his hand, guiding it to her entrance and gave him a guided tour of her by now very wet snatch which both of them very much enjoyed.

Once that was complete, she rolled off the table and pulled him into a big hug, pressing their naked bodies together and giving him a very brief peck on the lips.

"Ok, so that's pretty much how we all work and how you enlarge and reduce the different parts, so why don't you give it a try?" she said, breaking the silence.

So that's exactly what he did for the next ten minutes, Harry changed the size of various body parts on command before returning to his normal form.

"Right well I think that lessons pretty much over now. Just keep practicing and it'll become easier and easier."

"Ok, thanks for all of this, I really appreciate it." He replied.

"No problem. Come on, lets go find something else to do for the rest of the day." She said, sitting down by the desk again.

"Umm…Tonks? Aren't you going to get dressed first?" he asked

"Not unless you want me to. You've seen all I've got no problem with being naked. And you seem to be enjoying the arrangement a fair bit too." She added looking directly at his crotch.

"Well...umm…yeah….ok I guess we can stay like this for now then."

"Ok, so what do you know about occlumency? I know you took lessons with Severus last year, so tell me what you've learned." She said, deciding on their next topic of study.

"Nothing."

"What do you mean, nothing, Harry?"

"I mean his instruction consisted of "clear your mind" followed by hitting me with a legilimency attack going through my worst memories then insulting me for not blocking him then repeating the process. I didn't actually _learn_ anything." He explained.

"That bastard. That absolute certifiable, greasy, bat-like, pathetic bastard. That is the absolute worst way of teaching that I have heard of _EVER!_" she ranted "Ok, lets start from the beginning, there are a few forms of occlumency, the first is where you like ward off your entire mind and prevent people gaining access at all…this sounds like the best for protecting your thoughts, the only drawback is if someone is persistent it becomes a battle of wills and that's just not nice. The second form is where you isolate certain thoughts and just protect them…again, same problem. The third can be considered the hardest, but most people consider it to be the best way. With that one, you create a whole visualised fortress in your mind where all of your thoughts and feelings and memories and stuff are stored in various ways…this is like layered protection, they have to get into your fortress then search for the area with what they are looking for in and then get past any traps or protections you've set in there…stuff like locked doors, sequence protectors where they have to do things in a certain order or they get hurt, that sort of thing…and then they have to work out what to actually do with the object the is representing the thought, memory or emotion, as everything has a physical manifestation in there…basically if you do it right, there is absolutely no way in hell any one is gonna be able to get into your mind without permission. Now to do this…."

For the next several hours Tonks guided Harry through the various exercises necessary for creating his layer upon layer of traps, misdirection and protection in order to fully fortify his mind.

At the end of the session Harry was mentally exhausted but they were both satisfied with his progress so they decided to just sit and talk for a while, as opposed to trying to learn anything new.

When it was almost time for Tonks to switch over with Dung on guard duty the two got dressed and Harry walked her to the door, at which point Vernon Dursley decided to interfere.

"BOY! What is that FREAKISH whore doing in MY house?!" he yelled at the top of his lungs before pulling his fist back and punching Harry in the side of the head, sending him reeling back into the wall. At this point, both Harry and Tonks pulled their wands and pointed them squarely at Vernon who rapidly paled.

"Are you alright there Harry?" asked Tonks.

"Yeah, I'll be fine."

"Ok, go back up into your room, I'll just tell Fletcher to take over then I'll be right up."

When it comes to escaping an enraged Uncle Vernon, Harry Potter did not need to be told twice; he scrambled up the stairs and heard Tonks making a few threats to his uncle before leaving the house. No sooner had he reached his bedroom than Tonks once more appeared in it.

"Are you sure you're alright?" she asked quietly, obviously very concerned.

"Yeah, I'm used to it by now" he replied wearily.

"Right well if that's the way things are round here then I'm gonna stay so you don't have to put up with it alone, at least for tonight, if not for the rest of the summer. Unless you have any objections that is?"

"No objections, but you really don't have to do this you know?"

"I know I don't _have_ to, but I do _want_ to. Now it's nearly 10 o'clock and you look knackered so why don't we just go to sleep and talk about this in the morning?" she suggested.

They both got changed, him into a pair of boxers and her into a slightly over large t-shirt that came to just below the curve of her ass before she walked over and crawled into bed next to him.

"Umm…Tonks? What're you doing?" he asked.

"Oh, come on Harry, don't tell me after everything we've done today you can't even share a bed with me just to sleep in." she replied laughing lightly.

"I suppose it's alright then."

"Goodnight" she said as she wrapped her arms around him.

As they fell asleep, both were silently thinking how lucky they were to actually be able to be this close to the other, and wishing that they were sharing the bed for purposes other than sleeping.

The following morning when they both woke up, it was to find a not entirely unwelcome yet some what embarrassing problem that neither had considered the previous night. That being the fact that the tip of Harry's morning hard on was currently about an inch inside of Tonks, who was currently grinning at him "Morning Harry, don't you think it's a bit early for that?"

At which point he bolted for the bathroom.


	6. Meeting with Griphook

**Chapter 5: Meeting with Griphook**

And it was in this manner that their days progressed from there, training in the morning and afternoon, talking and getting to know each other in the evenings and sleeping at night. As the days went by the sexual tension and level of teasing between the two seemed to multiply, but neither pressed the other for anything more than that at this stage as it was all just for fun.

On the Thursday morning, one and a half weeks after Tonks began staying at Privet Drive they had just begun practicing, this time in the rapidity of firing offensive spells, when Harry's Aunt Petunia called him downstairs and to the door.

When Harry arrived at the door, he was confronted with an average looking man in a muggle business suit.

"Good Morning, Mr. Potter." Said the man.

"Good morning, I'm sorry, do I know you?" he replied.

"As a matter of fact we have met, just once before, but I doubt you would remember me. My name is Griphook and I am a representative of Gringotts of London, the image you currently see is an elaborate glamour we use while in muggle areas. Would it be possible to talk with you privately regarding some rather sensitive matters?"

"Oh, hello Griphook, I do actually remember you, you took me in the carts when I visited just after my eleventh birthday. Please, come in, we can discuss whatever business you have with me upstairs." Harry stated and they both walked past his rather speechless Aunt and up the stairs to Harry's room.

Once inside, Griphook asked Harry, "Mr. Potter, it is policy to only discuss these matters with the client. May I enquire to the identity of your friend?"

"Yeah, sorry, this is Nymphadora Tonks; she's a witch who's been helping me train over the summer. Anything you want to say can be said in front of her, no problem with me."

"What's going on Harry?" asked Tonks

"This is Griphook from Gringotts; apparently I've got business to deal with."

The goblin removed his glamour charm and sat on the opposite side of the table to the witch and wizard. "First of all I want to apologise for any inconvenience my visit may have caused, as the bank does not routinely make such visits, however, we find ourselves highly troubled by your banking record with us. There are a number of questions which need to be addressed first, if I may?"

"Please go ahead" Harry replied.

"Why have you never replied to any of the correspondence which the bank has sent you, if you don't mind my asking, sir?"

Looking confused, Harry responded, "What correspondence Griphook? The only contact I've had with the bank has been when I came in before my first and second years at Hogwarts."

"Indeed?" the goblin replied looking serious and somewhat angry (_not a pretty sight on a goblin _Harry thought) "There has been a grave error on someone's part then as our records show that we have sent you monthly statements, Director Ragnok has requested 4 private meetings with you, I have personally attempted to contact you regarding affairs of several of your companies and just last week a letter was dispatched inviting you to the reading of the will of a Mr. Sirius Orion Black. Are you telling me you have not received _any_ of these things?"

"No, I really haven't. I didn't know Gringotts issued account statements; I've never heard of…who was it? Ragnok, did you say? This is only the second time I've had contact with you, and I didn't realise Sirius had a will."

"I see. I will defiantly be investigating this matter further. Well, no matter, we can discuss some of these matters now. Here is a list of the contents of the vaults you inherited from your parent's estate." He stated while passing Harry a scroll of parchment.

Harry looked at the list:

Contents of Potter Vaults:

Family Chambers

16, 275, 173, 935, 126 (sixteen billion, two hundred and seventy five thousand one hundred and seventy three million, nine hundred and thirty five thousand, one hundred and twenty six) Galleons

42,185,038 (forty two million, one hundred and eighty five thousand, and thirty eight) Sickles

12, 583,921 (twelve million, five hundred and eighty three thousand, nine hundred and twenty one) Knuts

Precious and semi precious stones – estimated value of 12, 162, 948, 726 (twelve thousand one hundred and sixty two million, nine hundred and forty eight thousand, seven hundred and twenty six) Galleons

Assorted weapons, armour and shields – approximate value 18, 621, 000 (eighteen million, six hundred and twenty one thousand) Galleons

Various personal possessions – value not listed

Heirlooms vault

Assorted family heirlooms and personal possessions – itemised list not available – estimated total value 174, 274, 582 (one hundred and seventy four million, two hundred and seventy four thousand, five hundred and eighty two) Galleons.

Personal vault of Mr. J. and Mrs. L. Potter

294, 946, 309 (two hundred and ninety four million, nine hundred and forty six thousand, three hundred and nine) Galleons

5, 428, 046 (five million, four hundred and twenty eight thousand, and forty six) Sickles

2, 694 (two thousand, six hundred and ninety four) Knuts

Trust Vault of Mr. H. J. Potter

821, 645 (eight hundred and twenty one thousand, six hundred and forty five) Galleons

23, 469 (twenty three thousand, four hundred and sixty nine) Sickles

58, 634 (fifty eight thousand, six hundred and thirty four) Knuts.

Harry sat staring at the parchment, he couldn't even comprehend the amount of money he now had. And why was he never told about this before?

"I trust you have all of the appropriate keys, Mr. Potter?" Asked Griphook.

"No, I only knew about the trust vault, as far as I knew that was all my parents left me, and I don't even have the key to that any more because someone went to make a withdrawal on my behalf and never returned it, now I think about it."

"I see. Well no matter." He muttered a complex string of what was obviously a form of Gobbledygook and three gold keys appeared before him, which he handed to Harry. "The vault numbers are on the keys Mr. Potter. The family chambers are not accessed via key therefore none is provided for that one.

"Now the next matter you should be aware of is the properties left in that same will." He said while handing another scroll of parchment to the wizard.

Harry looked at it and was again rendered speechless. In addition to the cottage at Godric's Hollow, which he was always led to believe was destroyed, but apparently not, there was something called "Potter Manor" which according to the listings was a twenty five bed, 18 bath property with close to two thousand acres of land, as well as 28 other, smaller houses spread across the world and close to two hundred and fifty commercial buildings, including what appeared to be half of diagon alley and a fair bit of Hogsmeade. He also owned a few empty plots of land scattered around the country.

This was just more than Harry could take in at once. One minute he just about has enough to get by, the next he's rich beyond his wildest dreams.

"Are there any more surprises you're going to spring on me today?" he asked the goblin, only half joking.

"Indeed Mr. Potter, there is still the matter of the Black estate to consider. Now while not quite as old or rich a family as the Potters, the Blacks were by no means poor. I will forward the precise details to you when they become available but at this moment I can tell you that you have received well over a billion galleons from Mr. Black if you take into account the various properties that you will inherit.

"Next we come to the matter of titles and status. In the wizarding world Mr. Black was your legal guardian, even if he was in no position to exercise that authority, therefore you are currently without one. In such circumstances provisions are usually made in the deceased will, this was the case here. Mr. Black declared that at the earliest opportunity, in this case – now, you should become an emancipated adult with all the privileges that entails. Therefore if you will please sign here, here and here." He said while pointing at various parts of a form "we can complete the process."

Harry complied and Griphook smiled. "Congratulations, when that paperwork went through you just inherited a collection of titles, including the head-of-house position for the Moste Noble and Ancient House of Black and the Ancient and Noble House of Potter. Each of these comes with a Lordship and a Barony therefore you are now properly addressed as Lord-Baron Potter-Black. Are you following all of this sir?"

Harry nodded meekly. "Very well my Lord, I can see that this has been a lot of information to take in, therefore I will take my leave of you now. I will investigate your accounts as there seem to be several discrepancies therein. Should you have any need of further service then please do not hesitate to contact me personally. Additionally as you are now officially an adult, I have taken it upon myself to become your personal family banker, if this is acceptable? It just means that I deal with all of the dealings the bank has with your estates."

"Umm…Yes, that's fine, thanks."

"Very well my lord. Good day." He then gathered his papers and vanished into thin air.

Harry sat there for a moment trying to comprehend it all then said, "Tonks, did that just happen?"

She grinned, "Why yes it did my Lord Baron." She replied with a mock bow.

"Knock it off Tonks."

"Soz, couldn't help it."

For the remainder of the day Harry and Tonks went through the paper work Griphook had left so she could try and help him make sense of it all.


	7. Birthday Visits and Surprises

**Chapter 6: Birthday Visits and Surprises**

Two days after Griphook's visit was Harry's birthday, and he was somewhat disappointed by the fact that no one seemed to have remembered, not a single owl arrived that morning, unless you count Hedwig returning from a hunting trip. Tonks apologised profusely for not getting him anything but her reason of having been there with him almost none stop for weeks now was more than acceptable really.

For a change, they decided not to use that day for training, instead they would go to the park and just relax for the day. They found a small, secluded area of the park and had a couple of practice duals, just for fun, neither really making much effort and then they sat down and talked for a while, trading stories of their times at Hogwarts (Harry's generally much more full of adventure than Tonks').

All in all they were having a normal, peaceful day with nothing special happening. That wasuntil, at about lunch time, there were five flashes of light and they were suddenly surrounded by five very magical creatures, but these weren't even normal magical creatures, they had an almost ghost like quality to them. There was a Phoenix, a Griffin, a Basilisk, a Sphinx and a Unicorn.

At the sight of these creatures, 3 of which were known to be vicious all or some of the time, Harry and Tonks immediately drew their wands and began firing their most powerful curses, which strangely enough went straight through the beasts. After a moment of this the creatures all began to change, from animal into human.

The Phoenix became an old man with long white/grey hair and beard, both far past his waist, and dressed in robes of pure white.

The Griffin became another man, this time middle aged with shoulder length red hair, this man was dressed in full, old fashioned body armour of red and gold.

The Basilisk became a man of a similar age who had close cropped black hair and was wearing another set of armour, this time in rich green and silver.

The sphinx became a woman, tall and thin, with jet black hair and dressed in robes of a deep, royal blue.

The final animal, the unicorn, became a second woman. This one was much shorter than the first and also of a much heavier build, she wore a simple yellow work robe.

"Greetings." Called the old man.

"Who are you people?" asked Tonks and Harry at the same time.

Completely ignoring Tonks for the moment, the man in the red armour focussed on Harry and replied "We are your ancestors from many generations past. We have returned to help train you in your time of need."

"Umm…ok. So you're obviously some sort of ghosts or spirits but that really doesn't answer the question of _who_ you are, just _what_ you are." Harry said, beginning to get frustrated with the non-answers he was receiving.

This time it was the woman in the blue robe who responded, "You are correct my child, forgive us. You will have heard of us as our legacies remain from times past. My name is Rowena Ravenclaw and this is my husband Godric Gryffindor" she began, indicating the man in red and gold "he is Salazar Slytherin." She stated, this time indicating the man in green and silver. "and his wife, Helga Hufflepuff" this time gesturing needlessly to the only other female in the group. "and finally this, is Merlin." She said pointing to the ancient wizard in white.

Harry stared at them as though they had completely lost their minds.

"So, let me get this straight," he began "you're the 4 founders of Hogwarts and Merlin back from the dead to help me out with something and we're all related? I think you're gonna have to explain this a little better because right now I'm not buying it"

"Harry" Tonks said quietly "ordinarily I'd be sceptical too, but they do look like all the portraits and stuff I've seen of them and it's a known fact that all the founders were Merlin's descendants and there's been rumours about the Potter family being connected to them somehow for centuries now, but no one's been able to prove it either way since no one in your family has been willing to take any form of genealogy test about it."

"Ok, well I'll have that test thingy done at some point. Until then, I'll have to take your word you are who you say you are. But that still doesn't explain why you've all suddenly appeared out of no where or why now?"

Slytherin responded to this comment. "Ah, good, a cautious one, can't fault you there. Well, it would take a long time to explain everything but the basics are Merlin here was our Grandfather, 5 generations removed, he was still alive until we were in our early thirties and not long after we founded Hogwarts he gave a prophecy that stated that about a thousand years in the future give or take, there would be someone who was destined to rid the world of a great evil and that the five of us would return to this plane for a while to help prepare him for his task. There's a lot more to it than that but we've worked out that its you so we're here to help you be strong enough to get rid of this dark lord of yours."

"umm…no offence but why would you especially want to get rid of him? Not only is he your heir but he's also finishing what you started."

Salazar's face became sour "That bastardized abomination is no heir of mine. You are the closest living relation of all of ours, in fact you are directly descended from the four of us. Let me explain, Helga and I had only a single child, a daughter, who married Godric and Rowena's eldest son. The two of them had only one child, a son, who chose to change his family name to Potter. Descending from eldest son to eldest son, you are our direct descendent. Tom Riddle is from a family who claimed to be my descendants however there is absolutely no blood link between us at all, no matter how much he believes otherwise.

"As for him finishing what I started, I never started anything of the sort, it's just another lie that has been spread and exaggerated over the centuries. I had no problem with witches and wizards of pure, mixed or muggle blood, nor muggles themselves. What I tried to insist on with the school was that we only accepted those with the highest talent for magic, not those from the oldest families."

"Ok, so what do you want me to do then?" Harry asked.

"You need to go to Gringotts and submit to a heritage test there, that will prove that you are our heir. That will in turn give you access to our respective family chambers which include a substantial amount of money and weaponry, all of which is rightfully yours. It will also allow you to access a fifth vault, this time it contains only 5 items, one belonging to each of the five of us. You need to bring those items to your home and we shall visit you there tomorrow for further instruction." Replied Gryffindor.

At this they began to fade away. When they were almost totally gone, Hufflepuff called out "Happy Birthday by the way".

Harry looked at Tonks, "Ok, this summer just keeps getting weirder and weirder. Is there actually any chance of us getting to Diagon Alley today so I can get to the bank?" he asked sounding very tired.

Tonks thought for a moment before replying, "Yeah, that's no problem, I've got to go into the ministry for a little while anyway, so rather than keep putting it off for another day I'll drop you off at the bank and take care of it my stuff while you deal with yours."

"Ok, thanks. How are we going to get there though? I don't fancy travelling by muggle ways and can't use the floo without risking Dumbledore hearing about it, and I'm not supposed to be leaving the area." He reminded her.

"Ok, lets go back to the house then I think it's time I taught you an important lesson that, although the ministry don't seem to realise it, most witches and wizards pick up at some pint. How to make untraceable portkeys."

"Is that even possible?" he asked, confused "when they were explained to us at school it sounded like the ministry could track all of them."

"Nah, that's just what they want you to think. C'mon, you'll need to get your vault keys and stuff before we leave." She replied.

A little over fifteen minutes later, after a very quick lesson in things the Department of Magical Transportation wishes didn't exist, Harry and Tonks appeared out of no where, in a small off-shoot of diagon alley, both holding an empty ink bottle and promptly fell to the floor and straight into each other.

After scrambling to their feet they headed out into the main alley, which was fairly quiet as most of the wizarding world was too afraid to be out unnecessarily, and approached the imposing white building that was Gringotts main branch.

When they reached the base of the stairs up to the main door Tonks said "Ok Harry, I'll try to be back in about an hour, if you get done before then, try to either stay out of sight or if you feel you can hold it long enough, use some of the morphing abilities we've been working on to disguise who you are. Either way, I'll meet you back here as soon as possible." She finished quietly before aparating away.

Once she was gone, Harry climbed the steps up to the doorway to the building. The first sign he that there was increased security at the bank was that in place of the usual uniformed guards that he remembered from previous visits, there were 2 goblin warriors, each carrying a battle-axe and a shield with the bank's crest upon it. All in all they made a for a very intimidating presence, and Harry was very glad he had no intention of doing anything to provoke them as he was very happy with all of his limbs intact.

As he entered the main foyer area and approached the head teller, Harry noticed that the usually crowded room was relatively deserted – perhaps only 30 people were conducting business with the goblins at this time, and even then it was in hushed tones and while looking over their shoulders as if expecting Voldemort himself to jump out from behind a corner any moment.

"Good afternoon, I need to speak to Griphook please." Harry said to the ancient goblin, seated behind a high desk, who was currently surveying Harry as though he was a rather fascinating variety of bug…and since most of those featured highly on a goblin's diet, this was rather disconcerting for the young man.

"Account Manager Griphook is currently busy with important business. I will inform him at a later date that you were enquiring after him, Mr…?" the goblin replied as if talking to Harry was beneath him.

The attitude of this particular goblin was beginning to irritate Harry, so he decided to use something he remembered from his meeting with Griphook a few days previous.

"Very well," he began, "when Griphook has finished with his important business kindly inform him that Lord-Baron Potter-Black needs to see him as soon as possible."

At this the goblin paled, he had thought he was just dealing with some dumb human kid…he now realised that he had just inadvertently tried to snub the bank's single largest client, someone who carried power and influence throughout the entire magical world. Needless to say he feared for his life should his boss find out about his error.

"My apologies, I did not realise who you were, my Lord Baron. If you will follow me, I will escort you to his office personally." He said with a bow, hoping desperately to recover his previous mistake, all of which Harry found privately hilarious.

The goblin (who introduced himself as Floor Manager Picktooth) lead Harry through a pair of doors behind his desk and through a series of corridors, lined with doors, which Harry assumed lead to other offices. Eventually, they reached a rather ornate looking door at which point Picktooth stopped, knocked once on the door and gestured for Harry to enter, before retreating back the way they came, presumably returning to his station in the main part of the bank.

Harry slowly opened the door and looked in, he saw a goblin, presumably Griphook – but it was hard to tell from behind, searching through a filing cabinet for something.

Realising that sneaking up on a goblin could be a dangerous thing for him to do, Harry cleared his throat, announcing his presence.

The goblin turned round at this, confirming Harry's belief that it was indeed Griphook.

"Good afternoon Lord Potter, this is an unexpected visit. Everything is well, I trust?" he spoke, gesturing Harry to a chair in front of his desk, opposite his own.

"Hello Griphook, I apologise for turning up unannounced. There is some important business that I need to take care of at the bank, and since you are dealing with my other accounts, I thought it would be best to go through you."

At the mention of business, Harry had succeeded in gaining Griphook's full attention.

"Indeed, sir, it is probably best that way. Now, may I enquire as to the nature of your business today?" he asked.

"Well, there are several vaults here at the bank that have been inactive for a long time that I've just been informed I have the legal right to claim. I don't know if I trust the source of this information yet or not, but it required my immediate attention for reasons that I can't fully go into at this time." Harry replied, thinking that explaining that several ghosts of the most famous witches and wizards in recorded history had just visited him would be more likely to get him a one way ticket to St Mungos mental ward than access to any vaults, so it was probably best to be brief where possible.

"Very well My Lord. To which vaults are you referring and on what grounds does your source believe you can claim them?" enquired the goblin.

"Well, there are five that I know of. The Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin vaults as well as one that was opened in the name of all four of the founders of Hogwarts as well as Merlin. I was told that I am a direct blood relative of all of the previously mentioned people, but that you will need to conduct some sort of test…I'm guessing a blood test or something of the sort…to confirm this."

Griphook was momentarily stunned. It was well known among the goblins that those accounts still existed, but no one had tried to claim them in centuries…in fact it is rumoured that the last successful access to the vaults was made by the children of the Founders. It was also known that each one individually contained enough gold to make the fortunes of families like the Malfoys look like nothing…for someone who was already as rich a the human sitting opposite him to claim those fortunes as well as his already massive one…..this was going to be a very profitable meeting indeed, and he was inwardly very glad that he had been selected to oversee the Potter family's accounts.

"I am…aware…of the accounts of which you speak." He began, "And you are correct, in order to claim them, you will need to undergo a blood heritage evaluation test. I have the necessary equipment here." He said, while pulling out what appeared to be an ancient looking bowl, made of solid gold and engraved with runes and with a base large enough for a piece of parchment to be attached.

"If you simply place a drop of your blood into the instrument, it will evaluate and compare the sample to all known ones on record. This will in turn cross reference our lists of currently existing vaults and produce a list of those to which you are the rightful owner. If indeed you are the heir of the founders and the heir of Merlin then it is likely that there will be several other vaults that have been sitting, inactive, waiting to be claimed by their rightful owner to which you will be granted full access." The goblin said hungrily, thinking of the promotion and raise in pay he could be getting for this within hours.

Harry complied, pulling a penknife out of his pocket and slicing the tip of his index finger and dripping blood into the dish, before healing his hand again.

The pair waited for about one and a half minutes while the device made a variety of clicking, whirring and buzzing noises and emitted little puffs and wisps of multi-coloured smoke. _Reminds me of all that crap in Dumbledore's office _ Harry thought _wonder if he ever did get that all fixed…_

When the device eventually became silent again, the parchment that Griphook had fitted began to fill with writing, as though by an invisible hand. _This one is kinda like watching the Marauder's Map_ he thought, suppressing a grin _good thing that doesn't need blood to work as well_.

When the writing stopped Griphook removed the parchment and passed it to Harry. "This is a complete list of all family lines to which you are the primary or sole heir, as well as a list of all vaults attached to those families. All have now been removed from inactive status and been activated in your name. Congratulations, My Lord." He said.

Harry looked down at the lists before him…this was not quite what he was anticipating…he only wanted to get access to the five vaults he knew about…this list contained a lot more than five. But then, he rationalised – who was he to turn down all this money, especially if it was rightfully his anyway?

The list of families read as follows:

Merlin

Gryffindor

Slytherin

Hufflepuff

Ravenclaw

Potter

Crouch

Maclean

Bowman

McShaw

Atclif

Black

Campbell

Sandison

Although he had never heard of most of these families, the obvious few stood out….he already knew about the top six as well as the Black accounts, so that was no surprise. The name that surprised him most was Crouch, which he assumed was Barty Crouch's family…he guessed that when junior was given the kiss that must have been the end of the family line, which was presumably an off-shoot of his own which would explain control of their estate reverting to him. None of the other names were familiar to him though so he guessed they had probably been dead a long time now.

He saw that all of the families had at least one vault (in many cases, several) and 9 of them had notations that property had also been transferred.

Griphook gave Harry a few minutes to read and digest this information before speaking again.

"It would appear that who ever your source in these matters is, was correct. You are indeed the heir to the family lines you specified. As short lived as they were, the family lines of the four founders established quite a social and financial status. It has long been believed that they had ended, however it appears that the four re-consolidated into one, the Potter line.

"In addition to the property and financial assets listed there, you have also gained several additional titles." He continued. "Each of these families was of sufficient status to gain a Barony, which is now yours. Also, all except Atclif and Campbell carry a Lordship, bringing your total in that regard to 12 Lordships and 14 Baronies. There are various other titles associated with them, however those are now antiquated and carry now actual standing in society in modern times. Additionally, you have now been declared the legal Head Of House for each family and therefore control the Wizengamot seat associated with each. If you require any further information or assistance with these matters then I would be most happy to discuss it with you at another time. For now however, I believe you wanted to visit the chambers and vault for which you originally came to the bank today?"

Having momentarily forgotten about the initial purpose of his visit with the goblins, Harry took a moment to reply.

"Oh, yeah! I mean, yes please, if it's not too much trouble." He said in a rush

Griphook smirked at Harry's enthusiasm, before standing and leading Harry towards a second door out of the office, which the teen hadn't noticed until now. "This way, please. This is an entrance into the tunnel system."

When he opened the door Harry saw that it did indeed lead into the rock-walled tunnels that contained the many vaults that made up Gringotts bank.

"Which order would you like to visit them in, sir?" asked Griphook, as they climbed into the waiting cart.

"Actually, the only one I need to see today is the vault that had the five names on it. I need to remove some items from it." Harry replied.

"Very well, vault 035." The goblin replied as the cart set off at break neck speed. Strangely enough, although previously Harry had found the cart rides to be nauseating, this time it was in a strange way rather thrilling _kinda like diving on a broom really_ he thought.

They seemed to keep going downwards for what seemed to Harry like forever, and kept building up speed until the vault doors were mere blurs to his eyes as they sped past. Eventually, after about 15 minutes, the cart began to slow until it finally came to a stop. But not in front of a door, as Harry would have expected, instead they stopped by a passageway that lead off the main track.

From about fifty metres down, Harry saw a blast of fire erupting, illuminating a massive cavern. As they got closer to it, Harry saw the cause of the flames.

He had often heard the rumours. But to him, at least until now, they had been just that – rumours. Guarding a row of 8 vaults were 5 full grown dragons. 3 Hebridean blacks and 2 Hungarian Horntails. _Just great _ thought Harry _ I thought I'd seen the last of them things after the first task._

Something of his anxiety must have shown on Harry's face as Griphook said "Don't worry sir, so long as you are with a Gringotts goblin, they will not halm you. If someone were to attempt unauthorised access however…let's just say that the dragons enjoy their food, shall we?" He finished with a frightening smile.

Some how this did very little to reassure Harry of his safety, but at this point felt that he had little option but to trust Griphook. After all, he needed whatever these mysterious items were in the vault, and it seemed that to get to the vault, he would have to pass the dragons.

Harry followed Griphook towards one of the doors, all the time watching the dragons nervously. When they reached the door, the goblin placed his hand upon it and it began to slowly melt away into nothing.

"I will wait here for you sir." Stated Griphook.

"Thank you. This shouldn't take long." Harry replied.

Once he entered Harry realised that the huge, heavily guarded vault was practically empty. It was very easy for him to work out what the five items he was supposed to collect were, as there were precisely five items in total within the vault.

There was a sword, finely crafted in silver and encrusted with high quality, bright red rubies. Down the blade of the sword, made up of hundreds of tiny stones was the name "Godric Gryffindor", just like on the one he had pulled from the sorting hat, years previous. This sword however was much more ornate than the one he had previously used to slay the basilisk, and when he held it in his hand it felt as though it was made for him, and it pulsed with restrained power all of it's own.

The next item was one he recognised from his meeting with the spirits earlier in the day. It was the armour that the ghost of Slytherin had been wearing, perfectly preserved.

The third item Harry retrieved was a shield, made of an extremely strong metal that he couldn't quite identify. This had a crest on the back of it, and this he could easily identify – having seen it on an almost daily basis while at Hogwarts – this shield clearly belonged to Helga Hufflepuff.

The next item was a battle helmet like the warriors of old wore. The only clue as to the identity of the owner was that it had several sapphires embedded in it. And blue being a colour associated with Ravenclaw he felt that it was a pretty good guess it used to belong to her.

The final item, when Harry saw it, made him gasp with shock…while all of the others were priceless in their own right, the final was the thing of legend, he had read about this many times and from the stories there were only three facts that he could be sure of: who ever could wield it would be practically unstoppable, it could only be used by those with a pure heart and honest intentions and finally that, until now, no one had known what had happened to it. There before him lay a finely crafted staff made of a pure white wood, approximately six feet in length. Harry had just found Merlin's staff, one of the most powerful magical objects ever created.

He picked it up carefully, and when he did he felt a warmth spread throughout his entire body. If Godric's sword had felt like it contained power, it was nothing compared to this, it was simply indescribable.

Remembering that he should really be going, Harry decided to go now and spend time staring at them later, so he shrunk the objects down and placed them in his pocket before leaving the vault.

The cart ride back to Griphook's office was relatively uneventful.

Once they were seated at the goblin's desk again Griphook said, "There are just two more items of business I need to discuss with you, then I will answer any questions you may have.

"First, here are the keys to the vaults that need them from the ones you have just acquired." He said, passing Harry a small box containing about 18 of the small vault keys. "Finally, while you were in your vault, I received a message. It seems that Director Ragnok has already learned of your business here today and would like to talk to you as soon as possible, unfortunately he is tied up in board meetings all day. He asked me to find out if it would be possible for you to return in one week's time to meet with him?"

"Umm…yeah, sure, ok I guess I can do that, I don't think I have anything planned then that can't wait a while, tell him I'd be happy to meet with him."

"Very well, I will inform the director that you will be here at ten o'clock a week from today. Now is there any other business you have with the bank today, My Lord?" asked Griphook.

"No, thank you. I appreciate your help with all of this, a lot of this financial stuff goes way over my head, it's nice to know that at least someone is taking care of most of it for me." Harry finished with a smile.

His business done, Harry headed out of the bank to meet with Tonks, noticing that he had in fact been almost 3 and a half hours in the bank.


	8. Dumbledore, Tonks' Day and Confessions

**Chapter 7: Dumbledore, Tonks' Day and Confessions**

Tonks walked a short distance from Harry then apparated away to the atrium of the ministry of magic, where she intended to go to the auror office and request some additional time off.

She made it into the lift, for once totally alone which was very unusual considering how busy the Ministry in general was.

While in the lift, going down towards the correct floor, the lift stopped a few floors early and the doors opened allowing another person to enter. Ordinarily this would not have been a problem for Tonks, as it was very common for people to come and go in this manner. However, this was no ordinary person entering the lift, in fact, at this moment in time Tonks would probably have rather Voldemort and half his inner circle had just entered the lift with her. There in his midnight blue robes, with embroidered stars that were twinkling so bright they were only to be out done by his eyes at the sight of who he was to be sharing a lift with, was none other than Albus Dumbledore.

"Good afternoon Nymphadora, how are you today?" he asked in a falsely calm voice.

Thinking quickly she decided to just see where this was going. _After all_ she thought _he can't know _everything_ can he? I mean it's not like he has spies everywhere or that he's probably reading my mind right now…oh wait, he does have spies, I'M ONE OF THEM!_ She almost laughed at her own stupidity.

"Wotcher Professor, I'm fine thanks, and please don't call me that. How are you?" she asked politely.

"Ah, my apologies Ms. Tonks, forgive an old teacher an old habit. I am afraid that today I find myself confused on several accounts, which, if I may say so myself, is a somewhat uncommon occurrence for me. In fact, you may be able to shed some light on these things for me, if I may have a few moments of your time?" he asked while casting a spell to stop the lift between floors.

"Ok, what's up?" she asked, doing her best to play innocent and bringing her occlumency to its full effect.

"Well, let us begin with the most obvious question, hmm? I thought you were on the day shift, guarding at Privet Drive? If that is the case, who is there now?" he asked, trying to seem casually curious.

"Oh, that. I had some stuff I wanted to get done today so I traded off with Dung, just for today, I took some pepper-up and am gonna pull a double shift, tonight and tomorrow to make up for it. He said he was going to let you know…damn dog must have forgotten, probably too drunk, you know him." She replied, honestly. She had planned on taking Harry out today anyway so arranged for dung to cover for her so she could be seen to be out and no one would be the wiser so long as Harry was disguised. She was now very grateful that she had thought ahead, and decided that she'd have to get the drunk a bottle of Ogden's best to thank him.

"Very well, that's fine, so long as in future you are sure I am informed of any changes ahead of time." Dumbledore chided lightly. "Tell me, have you noticed anyone coming and going from the Dursley's house recently who looked at all out of place?" he asked, his grandfatherly eye-twinkle at full force.

"Out of place? No, can't say as I have, sorry gov'" she finished with a shrug. This was after all true, as the only unusual visitor to the house had been Griphook, and when he was coming and going he was disguised as a muggle business man, not at all out of place for a muggle business man to be visiting the house of a business man really, was it? So long as he didn't outright ask her _"did a goblin come to visit Harry a few days ago?" _ she wouldn't technically have to lie here.

"I see, I see. It's just that this morning I received a very interesting letter, and I've spent the rest of the day so far trying to find out what is going on, but no one here seems willing to give me the information…most frustrating, I'm sure you will agree? You see, it would seem that some how Harry Potter has become an emancipated adult and has full magical privileges and access to all of his family's funds and property…this is most odd, especially considering he hasn't left the house, you say that he has had no visitors, and I have been intercepting all of his mail since he returned from Hogwarts…most peculiar indeed. Offer an old man a fresh perspective, Nympha…I mean Ms. Tonks, can you think of anyway this could have happened?"

Tonks thought for a moment _I'm gonna have to be careful here._ "Well, it would seem that he has had a way of contacting people that you don't know about, for one thing. Also if no one at the Ministry knows how it happened then there's only one other way really isn't there?" she asked, privately seething at the headmaster's audacity at stealing and reading Harry's mail.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I don't quite follow…all emancipation applications have to pass through the ministry." He said, genuinely confused.

"Not necessarily, sir." She began. "Isn't it true that if the goblins declare someone an adult that the ministry just accepts it as fact as Gringotts is basically in control of everything that it means except magic use and there's not much point trying to stop them if they want to do it? Just a thought, I mean he probably doesn't trust the ministry after last year and that's the only other way I know of to do something like that." She finished, inwardly congratulating herself on sticking to the legal facts and not giving away that she knew anything else, while at the same time, being entirely honest with the old man so that any passive legilimency he was performing would not detect deceit.

"Hmm…an interesting theory. Yes, I think you are probably right there, that must be what he's done. I'd forgotten about that old law that permits goblins that sort of right as a sovereign entity of their own. Thank you, you've given me a lot to think about, now I've just got to find a way to reverse it." He said as he resumed the lift's motion. He then continued, quietly as though he was actually talking to himself, forgetting he was not alone. "Yes…reverse the declaration, find out how he's communicating and shut it down…get him to Grimauld as soon as possible so the Weasley boy can watch him for me…yes that should do it, we'll be having none of that nonsense."

As the lift stopped and the doors opened, Dumbledore seemed to remember himself "Very well Ms. Tonks, thank you for your help in this matter. Good day." He said and promptly left…though Tonks had to wonder if he was just trying to get away from her as she really couldn't imagine why he would be visiting the Department of Magical Games and Sports…though images of Albus Dumbledore joining a professional quidditch team flying around at break neck speeds, beard flying wildly in the wind did entertain her long enough for the lift to reach her destination.

Half an hour later found Tonks exiting the lift, back into the atrium, her business complete. She had not had any problems getting the time off, her direct supervisor being a bit of a push over really, so she spent a few minutes doing a bit more of the endless paperwork mountain that all aurors were forced to suffer through _honestly_ she thought _I don't know who they punish more sometimes, the criminals or us._

Checking her watch, she saw that she still had twenty minutes until she was due to meet Harry at the bank so she apparated back to diagon alley and headed to Fortesque's and bought an ice-cream for herself and one for Harry for when he was done at the bank.

She went and sat off to the side, out of the way on the steps leading up to the bank to wait for him, however long it would be…you could never predict it with the goblins, she knew from personal experience.

For the first time in a long while, Tonks found herself alone and with nothing to do so she let her mind wander over everything that had happened over the past few weeks at No.4 Privet Drive.

One thing about that time that Tonks had both been both constantly thinking about and at the same time trying to ignore, was her relationship with Harry and exactly what that relationship was.

They had been flirting with each other from the start, it was just something about their personalities that seemed to match and inevitably lead to it. From the very start there had been things like innuendo and plays on words and things, but that was just a part of who she was. But then, even on the first day of this training she was helping him with, there had been that massage to help him with the metamorph stuff, and she had to admit to herself, she had enjoyed that a bit too much, and all things considered she was pretty certain that he wasn't too far behind her with that.

That day had opened up a new aspect between them. Ever since that had happened they had been physically flirting, touching each other as they passed and brushing against each other in a very sexual way.

Then was the fact that they spent an awful lot of time in very little clothing, though little fully naked after that first day, and if Tonks was completely honest with herself she had found Harry physically attractive from the start, and between his powers being released and helping build him up and the work out routines they were doing, that was just increasing every day, at times it was hard for her to resist jumping him right then and there, consequences be damned.

And finally there was, Tonks thought, perhaps one of her best decisions in a long time…the sleeping arrangements. Sharing a bed with a scantily clad Harry Potter was something she savoured every moment she could. Especially since, like many males, he had a difficult time controlling his body, particularly while asleep. This meant that, more often than not, she woke up with Harry's arm wrapped round her and his very hard, very large cock pressed firmly into her somewhere or other, whether her back, ass, leg or against her pussy.

Tonks had come to realise that, as far as Harry was concerned, she was very much a pervert, and enjoying every minute of it, especially while they were sharing a bed.

While she was sure Harry was asleep Tonks would often bring herself to orgasm while imagining it was the young man laid next to her who was fingering her pussy and massaging her clit to perfection.

While she was thinking all of this, one event came to the front of her mind.

_It was about a week prior to that day, and Tonks had just woken up, when she opened her eyes she saw that Harry was still very much asleep and that it was extremely early, perhaps about 4:30am._

_As these thoughts entered her mind, she became aware of her surroundings and sensations and she realised that there was something unusually wet around her stomach and down onto her pussy._

_Now, one of the relatively unknown advantages of being a metamorphmagus was the ability to see in the dark by altering the shape of, and nerves connecting to, the eye. So that is exactly what Tonks did._

_What she saw, first puzzled her until she realised what it was at which point she was shocked…and then unbelievably turned on, as she found that covering the lover half of her body were thick, sticky pools and ropes of cum…Harry's cum _he must have been having a very pleasant dream tonight_ she thought, well she assumed it was done while he was asleep…either that or he'd wanked off_ _onto her body…but that didn't seem like the sort of thing he would do._

_Now, while most people would either get extremely angry at this point, or not make a big deal of it and just go to the bathroom and wash it off, Tonks proved to herself in that split second decision just how bad her naughty side could be at times as she scraped it all together and then, using her fingers, lifted it to her mouth where she proceeded to suck her fingers clean over and over again, until it was all gone._

_Tonks had had very little experience with men in her life. For all she was an out and out flirt, she was still a virgin and had only even had oral sex once and regretted it soon after…she was saving all of that until she found the right person, someone who would like her for her, not for her talents, therefore the taste and texture of cum was something fairly new to her, and she discovered she enjoyed it immensely._

As she was beginning to get way too excited for her own good even just thinking about all of that, Tonks returned to the present and what she had originally been thinking about.

Harry.

Her feelings for Harry and exactly what they were.

You see for all of the flirting and out right sexual behaviour they had recently exchanged Tonks really didn't know what she felt for Harry, if anything beyond friendship.

Well, that wasn't actually true either, she knew, she just didn't want to admit it to herself, let alone to him. But if truth be known, Tonks had – long ago – fallen head over heels for Harry Potter…not for the Boy-Who-Lived…for Harry.

If she was perfectly honest, she would realise that it had started a year ago, when she had first met him. While everyone else was busy doing Merlin only knows what, Tonks had found some time to get to know Harry and to a lesser extent his friends. She found him to be a great guy, very cute (in his own way) and just all in all fanciable. Now that she had spent days on end with him, it had only reinforced that opinion, and the fact that he was a mistreated innocent as well as a past, present and hopefully future hero only helped his case as far as the young witch was concerned.

No, Tonks decided right then that tonight, no matter how wrong other people might find it, no matter what the age difference, no matter what the chance of flat out rejection and no matter what the chance that he would move on within a matter of weeks or months, she would sit down with Harry that night and confess to him exactly how she felt about him and hope for the best.

The way she saw it, the worst he could do would be to sever all contact with her and kick her out of the house…and while that would hurt for a while, possibly a long time, she was used to rejection so it wouldn't be too bad eventually. On the other hand, he might feel the same, in which case they could be together properly, and if she was lucky he might just turn out to be that romanticised idea she had of 'the one'.

_Yes_ she thought_ the benefits are worth the risk…and boy, what benefits….snap out of it Tonks…No! He's hot!_

Tonks often spent time arguing with herself, but all things considered, it was worth it this time.

Speaking of time, she had completely lost track of time since she sat down and was broken out of her musings by a certain black haired, green eyed young wizard tapping her on the shoulder.

"Hi," he said "sorry to keep you waiting so long, I ended up dealing with more than I expected in there. You alright?"

Smiling up at him she replied "Yeah thanks, I'm fine. You?"

"Yep, I'm ok" he stated, smiling back at her.

"So, do you have anything else you need to do while we're out?" she asked casually.

"Not that I can think of, no. Why? You have something in mind?" he questioned.

Grinning she replied "well, as a matter of fact, I happen to know that it's someone's birthday today. I was planning on taking them out for a meal somewhere to celebrate, but I can't seem to remember who it was…do you want to go with me instead? I know a great restaurant near here."

Deciding to play with her a bit Harry decided to be awkward. "Well, I'm not sure, I mean I didn't have any other plans for the evening…I suppose if the food's good then it might be worth it. But tell me Miss Tonks, is this your backhanded way of trying to get me on a date?" he finished with a smirk.

Looking down at the floor and blushing madly she replied, "Umm…well I had hoped you wouldn't call me on it, and if you don't want to then I'd completely understand…but yeah, it kinda was in a round about sorta way." She finished quietly and in a rush, refusing to meet his eyes.

To say Harry was absolutely mortified would be, perhaps, the understatement of the century. He had only been teasing her, he'd never expected that in doing so he would hit upon the truth, especially with something like that…_I mean, it's ridiculous, _he thought_ she's beautiful and a great person, why the hell would she ask me on a date? And from the look on her face she wasn't teasing either. But I'm nothing to look at and I know I'm difficult to be around…but I do fancy her, and if I'm honest with myself I guess it's more than that, to be honest I've just been avoiding the fact that I'm in love with her, but she could never feel the same….could she? Well I guess this could be my one chance to find out._

"Tonks, I'm sorry, I was only teasing, I never meant to hurt your feelings like that. Yes, I would love to have a meal with you, if it's a date or not doesn't matter, the fact is I'll enjoy it either way, and if it is a date, well all the better as far as I'm concerned…I mean it's not every day that a bloke has a birthday and gets asked on a date by the most gorgeous witch he knows is it? So, yes, I'd love to go with you. Lead the way." He finished, much more confidant than he felt inside.

Tonks was touched by his words, and the obvious sincerity behind them made it even better, she looked up at him and broke out in the most dazzling smile Harry had ever seen (and considering he spent a year with Lockhart as a teacher that was saying something). She pulled Harry into a warm hug before taking his hand in her own and leading him off down the street.

Several minutes later found the pair approaching the front of one of the most expensive wizard restaurant's in Britain (of course Harry didn't know this, but even he could tell it was a bit posh from the outside).

As they went through the door Tonks whispered in his ear "The staff here are right bastards at times so don't be afraid to throw your weight around a bit with them, My Lord."

Instantly realising what she meant, he merely nodded.

As they approached the member of staff by the door, expecting to be seated, Harry realised exactly what sort of place this was. The young woman looked down her nose at the two of them.

"Yes, can I help you?" she began, "I'm afraid we don't allow your sort in here." She said with a sneer.

Tonks was about to reply, but Harry beat her to it. "Oh, and exactly what _sort _is that?"

With a face that made it clear that she considered him lower than something she had scraped off her shoe, the waitress replied, "street filth, this is a high class eating establishment, we only allow those of a certain position to dine here. And frankly I doubt you could afford a glass of water here, never mind a meal."

Now Harry was starting to get pissed off. "Is that so?" he asked with a false calm to his voice.

"It is."

"Tell me, what is your name?"

"Why should I tell you?"

Smiling evilly, Harry simply replied, "So that when I talk to your manager I can be sure you get all of the credit for turning me and my money away. Also, I'm sure the press would be interested in knowing that Lord Potter-Black isn't considered to be rich or famous enough to eat here….yes I'm sure that would cut the amount of customers here dreadfully…you might even go out of business…so, what's your name and where is your manager?"

Upon realising who she was addressing and realising that her initial impressions of the young couple before her had been grossly miscalculated and that her job would likely be forfeit should he carry out his threat, the young woman suddenly became highly co-operative.

"I apologise, sir. We have had a few instances of unfavourable characters trying to get in recently," she lied smoothly, "you can never be too careful, we have a reputation to uphold, I'm sure you understand." She finished with a sickly sweet smile.

"Of course," replied Tonks, "now, be a dear and find us a table before the night is over, eh?"

Remembering herself, the young woman began attending to her duties. "Right this way, please. I'll seat you in the VIP room at the back, I believe you will have it to yourselves tonight, I hope that is acceptable, this is where we serve our best clients…"

She droned on and on about how great it was and everything all the time she was leading the pair, until eventually they reached the table and were seated.

"Please make yourselves comfortable, and someone will be through shortly with the menus and wine listings, enjoy your evening."

Once she was gone, Tonks looked at Harry and said "Merlin, I thought she was never going to shut up…did she even stop to draw a breath?"

"Nope, I don't think so." Harry replied. "Well, I know you said you knew of a good place to eat, but I wasn't expecting anything like this."

"Yeah, sorry about that. I've been wanting to come here for ages, but never had time, or the excuse. Besides, this place is supposed to be the best, and I wanted to get the best for your birthday…consider it a late present and an apology for not getting you anything proper…I'll cover the cost so don't worry about it." She finished with a smile, one that Harry knew he would never be able to say no to.

They stopped their conversation when a waiter entered, carrying several menus.

"Good evening, sir, madam. I hope you enjoy your meal with us this evening." He began, spreading the menus out on the table and pointing to them in turn as he explained, "this is a list of our starters and breads, our fish courses, this one is for main, meat courses and their vegetarian alternatives, this is our desert menu, and this is our wine list. Additionally, this is a list of all of the wine from your personal collection…I know this is your first visit here sir, so you might not be aware, but this was one of the favourite establishments of your father, and his father before him. As such they kept an extensive collection of wine in our cellar for personal use…some of which, it pains me to say, are of an even higher quality than those in our own stocks."

This was news to Harry, but he appreciated the little insight into his family that he would never know.

Several minutes, and many changes later, they had decided on their full meals and the waiter disappeared again, telling them their requests would be served shortly.

They spent the few minutes before the food arrived talking about minor things, of little importance.

Once the meal was served and they were told to simply tap the plate with their wand to replace one course with the next, they were left in peace for the duration of the meal. This is where the conversation turned to what they had each done that day.

Harry began explaining about the blood test and the funny looking bowl instrument thing and everything that had been said until that point. Then when he listed the families that he was now the head of, Tonks practically gave Harry a shower in the wine, she sprayed that much of it over him.

"Back up a minute there sunshine, you're the head of _all_ of them families?!" she asked in disbelief.

Momentarily confused, Harry took the opportunity to use a quick cleaning charm before replying, "Yeah, that's what I'm told…why? Is that a problem?"

"'Is that a problem' he asks" she began, shaking her head "No Harry, it's not a problem, unless you count the fact that you've just listed some of the most influential families past and present, not to mention probably _the_ richest, not only in Britain but in the entire world, as a problem."

At this Harry was somewhat dumbstruck, he hadn't even heard of most of them, so settled for a simple "Oh." In response.

"Well you might as well tell me," she began, "did anything else interesting happen?"

Chuckling slightly, Harry said "Yeah, you could say that. I got the longest cart ride I've ever had going down to that vault to get the items I apparently need for something. Then when I got there I saw some of the Gringotts dragons. Oh and by the way, the things in the vault weren't just random items, by modern standards they're each priceless artefacts." He concluded, giving in to the absurdity of the situation, which had seemed perfectly reasonable until he actually stopped and thought about it.

For the next few minutes, Harry explained about his visit to the vault and what he retrieved. Tonks wouldn't believe him until he pulled them out of his pocket and showed them to her at which point she was in awe of what she saw and considered him crazy for just shoving them in his pocket, until he pointed out that he had little option as carrying that lot through Diagon Alley was one sure way to attract attention.

Once he was done, Tonks began explaining about her encounter with Harry's favourite headmaster. The news about why Harry hadn't received any owls lately didn't really seem to be too much of a shock to him, in fact, he had begun to suspect something like that might be the case…it seemed that every year, Dumbledore tried to keep him on a tighter and tighter leash.

Harry decided something at that point, and shared it with Tonks, who while reluctant at first, eventually had to agree it would be for the best.

If Harry couldn't trust Dumbledore or anyone associated with the order (which included most of the teachers) with the exception of Tonks, who he was sure was on his side, then that meant that he couldn't safely return to Hogwarts in September, as much as it pained him to not return to his one true home, it was the only way he could guarantee freedom from Dumbledore.

"Do what you feel is best. I can see advantages to either option and will support you whatever your decision." Was Tonks' simple and honest response when asked what she thought.

By this point in the conversation they were both a good way through their main meals and nearly ready for desert.

No, what hurt Harry the most, wasn't the confirmation of Dumbledore's actions, it was what Tonks had heard him muttering about getting the "Weasley boy" to "watch him", this called into question what he thought was one of his closest friendships, as though there were six of them to pick from, Harry assumed the "Weasley boy" in question would be Ron. And if Ron was watching Harry for Dumbledore, then just how much of their friendship had been faked towards that end?

Harry sat for a few minutes in silence thinking about this, and Tonks, realising how hard it must be for him let him think and deal with it in his own time.

The more Harry thought about it the more he thought the whole thing was a set up…him being left at the station first year with no instructions…just happening to hear a family talking very loudly near by about platform 9 ¾ and muggles…Ron just happening to stumble into his compartment soon after, claiming everywhere was full, when Harry had gone to the toilet soon after and passed 2 empty compartments on his way…Ron's insistence that Harry always spend time with him whenever possible, both at school and then at the Burrow and later at Grimauld, at the time had seemed innocent enough, if a bit annoying, but now was questionable in motive at best…_yes, _Harry thought_ as much as I hate to admit it, I guess it all makes sense in a twisted sort of way._

Sensing his rapidly darkening mood, Tonks decided it was time to distract his thoughts.

"Ok, so, are you done there?" she asked, gesturing to his plate, which was now practically empty.

Shaken out of his daze, Harry remembered himself. "Yeah, all done. Why don't we just take the rest of the wine with us to finish later and head back now?"

"Sounds good to me. I'll just get the bill." She said while making some sort of signal with her wand.

A moment later, their waiter came through the door, carrying a piece of parchment, which he laid on the table in front of them before taking a step back.

Tonks took a look at the amount and rapidly paled.

"Shit" she muttered under her breath.

Seeing the look on her face and guessing that the meal had been considerably more expensive than she had anticipated, Harry had a quick look for himself, and was somewhat shocked too.

The total read 285 galleons, 5 sickles, 8 knuts.

_I don't even have that much money in my vault, never mind with me._ Thought Tonks

Sensing her discomfort, Harry decided to take charge.

"Don't worry about it Tonks, I've got it." He said, pulling out his moneybag and began counting out the required amount…after all, considering how much he had recently found out he had, 300 galleons was pretty much just loose change to him now and he could probably eat here every day for the rest of his life and still be filthy rich.

Tonks tried to protest that she should at least pay some of it, but Harry wouldn't hear of it so eventually she conceded that realistically she couldn't even afford half the bill, and that he wouldn't exactly be hard pressed to meet it.

Another 20 minutes later found Harry and Tonks in his room at privet drive, having just portkeyed directly there. They sat down on the sofa, which had been conjured a few days previously, and began to relax after what had turned out to be a very eventful day for them both.

Tonks had come to a decision, now was the time to confront Harry about her feelings and hope for the best.

"I really enjoyed tonight, Harry." She began.

"Yeah, me too, the food was great." He replied, blissfully ignorant of what she was working towards.

"Yes, the food was pretty good, but what I meant was spending time with you like that. Listen, Harry, there's some things I feel I need to tell you and I want you to just let me finish before you say anything, ok? After that you can say what ever and do what ever you want, but please hear me out." She said nervously.

Detecting that whatever it was she wanted to talk about was something important, Harry turned towards her, giving her his full attention. "Ok, I'm listening."

She smiled weakly at him. "Well, you know I'm not usually one for being shy, so I'll just get right to the point. Since I've started spending a lot of time with you, I've come to realise that I really like you as a person. I like you for lots and lots of different reasons but none of that is important right now, the fact is, I do. The problem is, I like you a whole lot more than I should." She continued nervously. "If you want to kick me out after this, I'll go, no questions asked, and I won't hold it against you for a minute. But the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that no matter how wrong it probably is, the fact is, I think I might be falling in love with you, and I was kinda wondering if there was any chance you feel the same…" she finished lamely, blushing like mad and avoiding eye contact. _What have I done?_ She thought_ Couldn't I have just left well enough alone and seen how things go? No of course not, I had to open my big mouth…I might as well be packing my bags now._

Harry was shocked (not for the first time that day). Here was one of, if not the, most beautiful woman he knew, sitting there claiming to have feelings for him. Was this a dream? Of course he felt the same! She had a great personality, they got on perfectly most of the time and she had looks that most women would kill for (in just about any form she took, but especially her natural one). Realising that he had better say something before she got the wrong idea, Harry pressed forward.

"Tonks, I have to say this is kinda unexpected…and I have no idea what it is that you see in me that you like." He began. "But whatever it is, I must have been doing something right. Oh bugger, I'm hopeless at this stuff…I'll just come out and say it, yes, I feel the same, I like you very much, I don't know if it's love or not 'cos I've never known what that is, but, the answer to your question is yes."

"Really?" she asked, quietly.

"Yes, really."

Now that she had confirmation, and she was finally able to express how she truly felt, Tonks took this as an opportunity to show her feelings for him in style.

She leaped on top of him, legs on either side of his, wrapped her arms around his back and pulled him in to a hot, passionate kiss.

Harry was momentarily startled and unsure what to do; after all he hadn't exactly had much experience with this sort of situation before. However after a moment, his instincts kicked in and he did exactly what most teenage boys would do in his position. He pulled her tight against him and kissed her back for all he was worth.

When he did that, Tonks moaned against his mouth and after a couple of minutes ran the tip of her tongue along the seam of his lips, asking, begging for entrance to his mouth, which he readily granted, allowing their tongues to entwine and their passion to rise.

Soon, Tonks began to slide her hands under Harry's t-shirt, rubbing them over his stomach and chest, extracting a low moan from him as their tongues continued to slide against each other.

By this point Harry was almost beyond all logical thought and was entirely caught up in the pleasure of the moment.

He slowly slid his hands down her back and squeezed her ass through her skirt, enjoying the feel and the sensations it caused within himself.

Suddenly Tonks broke the kiss and Harry thought he'd gone too far until she ripped his top off and began kissing, licking and biting all over his neck and upper body while exploring further with her hands, which he decided was a very good thing indeed.

He slid his hands up along her back again, pulling her shirt over her head before scooping her up and carrying her over to the bed.

She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him down on top of her and threaded her fingers through his hair, guiding his mouth down to one of her breasts.

He quickly caught on to what she wanted and began to suck on it repeatedly, flicking and swirling his tongue around her hard nipple, making her cry out in pleasure before moving across to the other one, repeating the process.

Harry continued this process several more times, while Tonks managed to slide his jeans down and off his body and slipped her hand into his boxers, first cupping and massaging his balls, then wrapping her fingers around and his already hard cock and gently, slowly stroking it, eliciting a gasp from him.

Harry began working his way back up Tonks' body and kissed her on the mouth again while letting his hands wander all over her body. She kissed him back deeply and passionately and flipped him over onto his back, straddling him and taking off her skirt and his boxers, leaving him naked and her only in underwear, then while still kissing him she began to slowly grind her pussy against his throbbing cock.

Remembering something he'd seen in the magazines passed around the dorms at night, Harry slid down, under her body, slowing momentarily to tease her nipples for a minute, before continuing on and began licking and sucking at her cloth covered pussy, savouring her taste in his mouth while she ground harder against his face.

Now Tonks was really enjoying this, she had never had anyone do this to her before and she had to admit, it was good. She was moaning wildly as the pleasure built up, then she lifted up slightly and slipped out of her last remaining clothing before grabbing Harry's hair and pulling his mouth back up to her waiting snatch.

Now that he didn't have anything in the way, Harry was able to bring her even more pleasure; he alternated between sliding his tongue in and out of her entrance, licking up her rapidly flowing juices and sucking on her clit.

It didn't take long before it all became too much for Tonks, she pushed down into his mouth one last time, while pulling up on his hair and moaning out his name as she climaxed hard, all of her cum flowing out onto his waiting tongue and mouth as he eagerly lapped it up.

Once she had come down from her orgasm, Tonks lay down next to Harry and pulled him into another searing kiss, not at all minding her own taste on his lips and tongue.

"That was amazing." She murmured in his ear minutes later.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it, I wasn't sure if I would do it right, but wanted to try." He replied.

Smiling at him, she said, "Oh, believe me, you did just fine." Making a split second decision, she looked him in the eye, "Now, I believe it's time for me to repay the favour."

She pushed him flat onto his back and began to kiss her way down his body, starting t his chest and going all the way down to the base of his cock, which was rock hard and standing up straight in anticipation of what was to come.

Slowly, teasingly, she flicked her tongue out and licked up along the underside of his shaft until she reached the head, at which point she swirled her tongue around before taking half of his length into her mouth and sucking as hard as she could while slowly moving up and down, gradually taking more and more into her mouth then her throat until she was deep throating his entire length.

Right then, Harry was sure that he must have died and gone to heaven, there was no other explanation for the wonderful, indescribable feelings he was having.

As Tonks continued to pleasure Harry to the best of her ability, he soon began to feel the pressure rising within him and knew what was coming. He tried to speak out and warn her so she wasn't caught off guard, but the only sound that came out was a moan.

Tonks was at first surprised when he began to shoot directly into her mouth and gagged on the first shot, but soon got control of herself and began to suck as hard as she could and pumping up and down on his cock, desperate to get as much as possible as stream after stream hit the back of her throat and she hurriedly swallowed it all down.

Eventually, he stopped and as he began to go limp in her mouth, Tonks released him and slid up, wrapping her arms and legs around him, holding him close.

It was in this position, laid side by side and in each other's arms that they soon fell into sleep, occasionally waking to repeat their earlier activities.

As he drifted off for what would be the final time that night, there were two thoughts that came to mind…he was a very lucky guy, and it had been one hell of a birthday.


	9. Advanced Training Begins, More Power and

**Chapter 8: Advanced Training Begins, More Power and Old Knowledge**

The following morning, Harry awoke somewhat later than usual, as he had been very exhausted from the long day and even longer night.

But no matter how tired he was, when he remembered all that had happened the previous evening he couldn't help but smile. As he began reliving those events, he became aware that a certain part of his anatomy was expanding and pushing into something that it probably ought not to be, but at that moment in time, he was beyond caring.

Harry continued to lay there, not really doing anything, for several minutes until he felt Tonks begin to stir. At that point he opened his eyes and looked straight into hers. They smiled at each other, both inwardly glad that the other was showing no sign of regretting what had happened, leaned in and gently kissed, gradually becoming more heated.

Half an hour, and a fair amount more exploration of each other's bodies, later found them both enjoying a shower (at Tonks' insistence…some lame story about saving water) in the small bathroom that they had magically created off Harry's bedroom.

Harry would never know how Tonks had managed that one, but it would seem that she had cast a spell that temporarily made the Dursleys forget all about their third bedroom and the people occupying it, therefore they no longer needed to interact with the muggles at all…a vast improvement in Harry's opinion.

Eventually they managed to get around to getting clean and then got dressed ready to start the day properly.

Harry got out the five objects he had retrieved from Gringotts the previous day and expanded them to full size…all the while wondering exactly how these would help him. I mean, if he could actually use it, the staff would be an invaluable weapon, and it couldn't hurt to learn how to use a sword he supposed, but at the same time, a helmet, a shield and some body armour probably wouldn't be of much use in a magical fight unless they could deflect killing curses which Harry somehow doubted…but still, he had been told by the founders and merlin that he would need it all so he'd play along for now.

_That's another thing_ Harry thought _when are they actually getting here? It's not exactly as though I can go tell them I'm ready, is it?_

No sooner than he had thought this, did the five spirits begin to shimmer into view before him.

"Good Morning to you, my child." Greeted the ghost of Merlin.

"Hi, I was just wondering…how did you know to come here now? I mean instead of five minutes ago or half an hour from now?" he asked.

Ravenclaw answered him, "We sensed that you were ready for our arrival. It is an ability that even for us was not easy to master, and since it requires you to be dead, you will hopefully be unable to learn it for quite some time, do not dwell on it."

"Umm…ok"

Tonks walked over to Harry, and said quietly to him, "Sorry, I'm gonna have to go now, I just remembered – Dumbledore set a meeting for his little bird club today and I want to see what he says about you. Could be fun! Will you be alright by yourself?"

"Yeah, I think I'll be ok. Let me know what's said later."

"Ok." And with that, she apparated out of the room.

"Well, while this is all rather touching, I was under the impression we were here for a reason." Began Slytherin "Did you retrieve the items we told you to get?"

"What? Oh! Yeah, they're over here." Replied Harry, walking over to where he had left them on a table.

"Very good. Now, when you picked them up, did you feel anything?" Asked Hufflepuff.

"Yeah, a sort of tingling sensation in my hands and sort of like a presence within them I guess would be the best way to describe it…it was strongest with the staff and to a slightly lesser extent the sword…what was that?" he finished uncertainly.

It was Merlin who answered. "I think it is time we told you a story, young Harry. As was explained to you yesterday, I was a seer in life. One of quite exceptional talent, if I do say so myself. And I foretold using my abilities that there would be a time when the five of us would return to instruct someone who would be the defeater of darkness.

"Now, none of that is new to you as we told you as much yesterday. However, what you don't yet know is the steps each of us took in order to help you. You see, each of us were masters of the arts of magic – though some of us specialised in different areas, we all shared that common latent talent. Now, knowing that it would one day fall to us to help you become the most powerful wizard you could possibly become, I devised an enchantment. The purpose of this spell was to allow each of us to, upon our deaths, seal our raw magical power within an object. Those are the objects we chose." He concluded, needlessly indicating the items.

"Ok, I think I'm following you so far….so you enchanted the objects and presumably yourselves as well so that when you died your magical energy would be transferred and stored in them? Is that right?" Harry asked, wanting to make sure he didn't get lost along the way with this.

Merlin beamed at him, "Precisely! Now, as to the purpose of that action. Well, we have no physical bodies anymore so it would be next to impossible for us to re-absorb that energy for our own use…however there is a fact about magical energy that was almost forgotten when I was in my youth, and is now completely unknown to all.

"I trust you know that each and every living thing on the planet, whether witch, wizard, muggle, beast or plant, has a unique magical signature?" at Harry's nod, he continued "Well, what you do not know, is that the magical signatures of people of the same lineage, that is to say members of the same family, are compatible with one another and the best matches are from direct decent along the family lines, as is the case with the six of us. Do you understand what this means?"

"I understand what you're saying, and you're right I didn't know any of that last bit. But I don't see where you're going with all of this."

"Ah, yes, another piece of the puzzle lost over the millennia since my own magical instruction. In my day, long before even these four were born, there was a ritual that could be performed by a Master Mage, that is to say a wizard such as myself with very high power levels and an equally high understanding of magic itself, which would temporarily allow one being to borrow and absorb into their own magical core some of the magic of another being so long as their signatures were sufficiently compatible, thus making the recipient temporarily stronger.

"When we found out about your future need, I looked into the intricacies of this process and discovered that, if it was done using the stored magic of a dead person, it could be made permanent. This means that we can now give you a massive boost to your magical abilities, literally making you the most powerful wizard that had ever been recorded, by giving you all of our magical power and any latent abilities we had, for example you would gain my gift for Seeing."

At this point Harry had to sit down before he collapsed. Five of the most powerful witches and wizards he had ever heard of had just given him a way of gaining all of their power to add to his own…well his chances of beating Voldemort and surviving had just gone from practically zero all the way up to "actually possible". But then a thought occurred to him.

"Umm…Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for this and everything, but before we do this I need to ask….will I actually be able to control that much power? I mean since I had all of my magic released I've only just been able to get full control back…and now you're saying we are going to add…what? Probably about 10 times more power?" he asked.

This time it was Gryffindor who replied. "You don't give yourself enough credit there Harry. In terms of raw power you are already slightly higher than I was in life, and although they are probably going to kill me all over again for saying this, I was the strongest in raw magic out of the four of us. And while it's true, merlin is naturally more powerful than you, it's not by much…all in all this will probably only give you maybe three or four times the power you currently have. As for controlling it, we will help with that. If you agree, we plan to tutor you every day for the next month…as that is the amount of time we are permitted to stay here and help you…you will learn from each of us on separate days and we will teach you everything we know that can possibly help you. Do you accept our terms?" he finished with a smile, letting Harry know that although they were discussing serious issues, they were friendly and genuinely wanted to help him out.

Harry thought about it for a minute. _This is exactly what I need really…a massive power boost as well as personal training from the best there has ever been…that should probably be better than anything Dumbles pulls out of his backside, especially since he isn't really interested…well, really there's only one option._

"I realise that there is really no other way to do this, so yes, I accept your terms. How do we start?"

For the next five minutes, merlin explained the ritual, with occasional input from Ravenclaw. And then they were ready.

"One last thing before we begin," began Ravenclaw "of our number I was the last to die, though only by a few short years, and in some of my spare time I conducted extra research on this process, and developed it further. When you receive power from my helmet you will discover that you will also receive the sum total of my knowledge from approximately two days prior to my death. While you have that knowledge you will need time to process it. That is what I will work with you on, processing all the information I acquired during my life."

Harry merely nodded, once again dumbfounded that in addition to all of this power he would also be getting all the knowledge of one of the smartest witches ever to live, one who was actually famous for and founded a house based around knowledge…he guessed that after everything that had happened the past few days he should just give up being surprised about things anymore as it seemed like he was destined never to have a normal day again in his life for the foreseeable future.

The way merlin explained it, the ritual was pretty straightforward as far as Harry was concerned. All he had to do was a fancy bit of wandless magic while reciting a few phrases in latin…the only tricky part was that if he made any mistakes the object he was working on at the time was liable to blow up in his face with enough power to level a fair portion of the town to nothing more than dust…so no pressure.

Harry picked up merlin's staff, intending to begin with that when Hufflepuff spoke up, "I wouldn't recommend it. To give your body a chance to adapt to what's happening, it's probably a good idea to start with the item containing the least power…that is to say, the one from the person who was magically the weakest. In this case, that would be me.

"Rowena and Salazar were of similar power levels to each other therefore it shouldn't matter which of theirs you use second and third." She continued, "Fourth would be Godric's sword and finally, the most powerful among us would clearly be merlin. This is going to be a tiring process for your body anyway as your magical core is going to have to expand and adapt to the extra power…you might as well lessen the strain any way you can, my dear." She concluded with a smile.

Harry re-placed the staff and picked up the shield instead, conjuring a separate table to put it on with a wave of his hand.

Next he placed his hands on top of it, feeling and trying to sense the power that he knew was trapped inside.

Once he had managed that he spoke in a calm, powerful voice "Terminus Tutela", commanding the protection spells that had been placed on the object to preserve the energy to vanish, allowing him to continue.

Next, while trying to channel his own magic into the shield, he said,

"Agnito Meus Veneficus Quod Permissum Mihi Vestri Vox!"

This was the spell that instructed the enchantment on the shield to compare the signature of the trapped power (Hufflepuff's) and compare it to the castor's (Harry's) to see if they were compatible. The shield began to glow in a white light, this meant that it was working.

"Solvo Ut Mihi Vox Vos Habitum!"

He commanded it to release its hold on the power within. He began to glow in the same white light as the shield, confirming the process had progressed to the next stage.

"Penetro Mihi Planto Mihi Vestri Quod Fio Mei Redimio Nostrum Vires Pro Totus Infinitio!"

This was the spell to complete the process, it merged the two magics and changed the signature of the new one to make it match Harry's own. At this point the shield stopped glowing and Harry became even brighter with a white/gold aura surrounding him.

Eventually the light faded back into his body and he instantly fell backwards into the chair behind him, temporarily exhausted from the effort involved in the final stage.

"Wow, this feels great," he said "a bit tiring to get it, but the feel of the raw power within me is gonna take some getting used to, it's like a warm feeling in my whole body."

The five smiled happily…well except Slytherin who just looked slightly happy but didn't smile (he had a reputation to uphold even while he was dead after all)…glad that it had been successful.

Once again, Hufflepuff was the first to speak up, "I am glad that you were not hurt in the process and know you will make good use of my power Harry. However, now do you see why I thought it best to begin with the smaller transfers?"

Shuddering at the thought of jumping straight in at the deep end and absorbing what would probably be about twice the amount of power on his first try Harry merely nodded at her.

Next Slytherin spoke up "Come on, get back up, there will be plenty of time to rest once you have finished the job…you're not anywhere near done yet. It's best to do all of them at once because even though you will be thoroughly exhausted afterwards, it means that you only have to relearn to use your magic once, instead of five times…now if you would happen to derive some twisted form of masochistic pleasure from doing that then by all means we'll come back tomorrow and finish this, otherwise…GET OFF YOUR BACKSIDE RIGHT NOW AND GET BACK TO WORK!!" he finished with a growl, making Harry jump and at the same time wonder how this guy had ever been a teacher…then again, considering the current holder of the position of head of his house at school was Snape…a lot of things began to make a twisted kind of sense…

Choosing not to comment on this, Harry picked up the next item, coincidently, Slytherin's armour and placed that on the table after removing the shield.

Now that he had completed the process successfully once, Harry had a bit more confidence in his ability to repeat the act and instead of breaking it into sections, he did it all in one stage, as Ravenclaw had advised would be better once he got the hang of it.

"Terminus Tutela, Agnito Meus Veneficus Quod Permissum Mihi Vestri Vox" the armour glowed, "Solvo Ut Mihi Vox Vos Habitum" so did he, "Penetro Mihi Planto Mihi Vestri Quod Fio Mei Redimio Nostrum Vires Pro Totus Infinitio!"

This time the feeling within him was slightly more intense and his aura was noticeably brighter than the first time.

After a moment's rest, Harry began again, this time with Ravenclaw's helmet.

Everything proceeded as it had previously until Harry completed the final line…this time, not only did he feel the strange yet comforting warmth and glow brightly with magic but he also received a rush of information, all out of sequence as though he had just, in that split second, gone into a library and read every page of every book there totally out of order….a potion recipe, followed by a couple of runic equations followed by the layout of Hogwarts, followed by another potion, followed by information about the theory of magic itself...and so on. It was all very confusing for Harry, and if it weren't for his natural healing abilities he was sure he would have a headache worse than any in recorded history.

Eventually, he managed to block out the sensation along with most of the flow of information by using one of the techniques Tonks had taught him with occlumency…in this case, it meant the whole lot of the information went through his mind quickly one last time at which point his subconscious mind sorted it into categories and filled it away for later use along with all of his own knowledge…this was usually a method of increasing your ability to recall facts, but in this case it seemed as good a way as any.

"Are you alright Harry?" asked Ravenclaw, "I put an awful lot of information in there, I know it might be overwhelming at first but you will need most of it soon enough and that was the easiest way to give you it" she finished apologetically.

"No, I'm fine." He replied. "It was a bit much to cope with at first but I used some mind focusing techniques I know to help sort it all out a bit."

After a few minutes rest and a brief conversation with the other 5, Harry exchanged the helmet for Gryffindor's sword and began the process again.

When he completed the final part of the incantations, Harry glowed so brightly it was almost painful for the others to watch (if they were actually capable of feeling pain, that is). As well as that the feeling of power was greatly stronger than any of the previous ones.

Once the light eventually faded, and Harry had recovered somewhat, he asked them "What is that glow thing that happens at the end anyway?"

Merlin replied, "The glow surrounding you at the end is your magical aura, the brighter it glows the stronger the wizard, that is why yours gets brighter each time…you are getting stronger and it is reflected in your aura…the colour represents you as a person. Not so much personality traits as an insight into your soul…you, like I are among the very rare in that we have, or in my case had, a white aura. This indicates that you are pure of heart and could never possibly stray from the path of the light – it simply isn't in your nature. The gold flecks within it strengthen this impression, as the colour gold in auras has much the same meaning, only it represents more the strength of character than the purity of ones soul." He concluded with a fond smile.

Still fairly tired, and wishing he could sleep for a week, but knowing that he still had more to do, and like Slytherin said earlier, it was better to get it over and done with than drag it out, Harry replaced the sword with the staff ready to begin again.

This time, the feeling of power entering his body was so intense that Harry struggled to complete the final part of the incantation.

In fact, as soon as the final word left his mouth, he instantly collapsed from exhaustion and lapsed into unconsciousness.

The four founders spun around to look at merlin. Ravenclaw was the first to speak up, almost instantly. "What happened? Will he be ok? What's going on?" she asked frantically, genuinely concerned that they had injured him by having him absorb so much at once.

"Relax, my child, this is a side effect that often occurred when this process was common place. It is testament to his strength that he did not loose consciousness prior to this. Very few would be able to cope with even half of what his body had just endured. Allow him to rest for now, give him time to adapt. He will awaken when he is ready, not an instant before." Stated the ancient wizard, seemingly unconcerned for the young man before them.

Several hours later, Harry began to stir. When he first regained some level of awareness, his first thought was _what am I doing on the floor? _ Then he began to remember all that had happened that morning.

The sound of a non-existent throat being cleared drew his attention to Merlin, who was the only spirit still in the room with him – the others having returned to where ever it is spirits go when they are not among the living.

"Welcome back, young Harry. Are you feeling quite alright?" he asked softly.

Harry considered this question for a moment…physically, he was fine, he even felt refreshed after the rest. Mentally he was still a bit confused, but knew that would soon pass as it was simply the effect of his brain having yet to fully rejoin his body in the realm of the conscious. However that wasn't the thing that was troubling the young man. No, what was unusual was the fact that several seemingly random items around his room, as well as merlin, were glowing in various colours.

"I'm not sure…I feel ok, but did I hit my head or something? Because loads of stuff looks like it's glowing when it shouldn't be doing that." He answered, deciding that it might be some sort of left over effect from what they had been doing earlier.

At this, merlin smiled widely, looking very pleased at Harry's answer. "Good! I had hoped you would gain that ability, I found it very useful in life.

"You of course remember our earlier discussion regarding the fact that all living things have a magical signature, yes?" Harry nodded, not seeing where this was going, and waited for the other man to continue, "Well, the same holds true for enchanted or inherently magical objects…wands, some books, moving photographs, talking mirrors…many everyday items such as that.

"Now, you may be asking yourself, what does this have to do with anything? Hmm? Well, as I mentioned in passing earlier when we discussed the process of the power transference rituals, as well as our raw power, you also gained many, if not all, of the latent magical abilities that each of us possessed. In this case, you are experiencing an ability gained from me, at least I assume that is where you got it as I don't recall the others ever mentioning having it, this is a very rare ability referred to simply as mage-sight.

"What it does is allows you to see the magical signature of an object or person. In the case of an object, as I'm sure you are seeing many of in this room, it will have a single colour for each enchantment places upon it and they will be built up in layers if there is more than one…the oldest will be the one closest to the object to your sight. In the case of a person, the inner ring if you like, will be that person's aura and surrounding that will be the colour representing any spells or enchantments placed upon that person at the time…anything from a tickling charm to an imperius curse will show, so it can either give you erroneous information or give you valuable strategic knowledge about your opponents in a battle scenario. Each spell on a person or object will have a unique signature, I will teach you how to recognise each one in time." The spirit concluded.

Harry decided that this was another one of those strange things that he was just going to have to learn to live with…after all, as merlin said, it could come in handy at times.

"So, what next then?" he asked, simply side stepping the issue for now.

"Well, you have had a hard day already, so we will begin your training proper tomorrow. As was mentioned earlier, each day you will be training with a different one of us and we will each be instructing you in a different area of magic.

"I will be teaching you the theory of magic and spell creation, as well as the use of mage sight and your elemental abilities and animagus transformations, which I believe you have yet to explore.

"Godric will be teaching you sword play along with warding and defensive magic as well as the use of runes.

"Salazar will be instructing you in the creation and brewing of potions as well as offensive magic and the mind arts.

"Helga will tutor you in divination…don't dismiss it, I'm not talking about that rubbish with tea leaves and palm reading you get taught now a days, I mean proper divination of old…she will also continue your education in herbology as well as increasing your knowledge of understanding and caring for magical creatures.

"And finally, Rowena will be guiding you through advanced conjuring, charms, transfiguration and enchanting objects.

"As you can tell, this is an awful lot of work to get through and we only have 28 days to do it in…well 27 now and 26 by tomorrow, as we can only return to this plane for one lunar cycle before we must return to what is beyond this world. We will be working every day unless you have something to do at that time that cannot be postponed. You will spend 5 days with each of us and the final day will be a test of sorts for you to put your new knowledge to use. Now, do not be fooled, you may only be getting five days with each of us and covering multiple subjects within that time, but each of us is among the best that has ever lived in our respective fields of study, and after our time is up, if you have worked hard, you will be well past the level of any of your peers, in fact there will be very few living who will be able to approach your level of knowledge and ability as much of our knowledge is of long forgotten arts. Once our instruction is complete I would recommend you spend some time acquainting yourself with the developments in magic since our time.

"Do you understand everything I have just explained? And do you wish to proceed? If you do then we will expect the highest level of commitment from you." The wizard finished sternly.

Harry didn't need to think about this anymore, he had time to realise that this was the chance of a lifetime and that he would be a fool to turn it down.

"I understand, and am willing to accept any teaching that the five of you can give me. I need everything I can get if I am going to win this war, and I fully intend on doing so." He finished with a determination that made the old wizard proud.

"Good. In that case, I will return tomorrow to begin our lessons together. I will be first, Godric will be your second instructor, then Salazar, Helga and finally Rowena, before I will return once again." He explained. "I suggest you rest for a while now and do not over exert yourself for the remainder of the day. Goodbye." He concluded before fading out of sight, leaving Harry alone in his room.

He went and laid down on the bed and tried to process everything that had happened over the past hours, as well as everything that was still to come.


	10. Order Meeting, Confrontations, Revalatio

**Chapter 9: Order Meeting, Confrontations, Revelations and Loyalties Decided**

With a small popping sound Nymphadora Tonks appeared, seemingly out of thin air, in the street outside 12 Grimauld Place, home to the Black family and headquarters to the Order of the Phoenix.

It was for this last reason that Tonks was there, she had been informed the previous day of an order meeting at which her presence was required. Though no one had actually told her the purpose of the meeting, she had a pretty good idea…and she also planned on giving Dumbledore and anyone in the order who sided with him a piece of her mind about his treatment of Harry and his general competence as headmaster and leader of the order.

When Tonks entered the large kitchen, where the meeting were generally held, there were already a lot of people there. All of the Weasleys (minus Percy who was still estranged, yet strangely including Ron and Ginny), Mundungus Fletcher, Mad-Eye Moody, Remus Lupin, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Hestia Jones, professors Snape, Sprout, Flitwick, McGonagall, Hagrid as well as Poppy Pomfrey and Hermione Granger were all present. Tonks noticed the pattern straight away, these were all the people in the order (as well as three extras) who had the most involvement with Harry in one way or another…Harry had spent summers with the Weasley family since before his second year, Granger's connection was obvious, as were the professors'. Mad-Eye, Kingsley, Hestia, Dung and herself had all spent significant time on duty at Privet Drive. Pomfrey was an odd choice until Tonks remembered the amount of time he had spent in her care over the years. And finally Remus Lupin had a personal connection to Harry, as the last of his father's friends (not including Wormtail).

Tonks did one more sweep of the room before surmising that the only person they were still waiting for to begin the meeting was…

Just as she was completing the thought, the fireplace flared to life in a bright green flame, signalling an incoming floo travel, and out stepped Albus Dumbledore, who was almost always late like this, just to make an entrance…._regular drama queen that one_ Tonks thought with amusement.

Everyone took seats around the table, though Ron Hermione and Ginny got some funny looks from the others who clearly had no idea what they were doing there.

"Good morning my friends and welcome." Dumbledore began, "I thank you all for coming on such short notice. I called you all here because I want to discuss a situation I have been made aware of and for us to work together on a plan to try to undo the changed that have been made and repair any damage done.

"Yesterday morning, I received official notification from the ministry, in my official position as Headmaster of Hogwarts, that one of my students, a Mr. Harry Potter, had been legally emancipated." At this point he had to pause because murmuring broke out among many of those present.

"What do you plan on doing Albus? That boy can't be left to take care of himself! How did this happen?!" Said a nearly hysterical Molly Weasley.

Tonks noticed that the reaction among the group was mixed…some were clearly waiting to find out exactly what business it was of theirs, since Dumbledore said it was done legally, what was the problem? Others seemed genuinely concerned. While still others…a frightening amount, she thought, seemed angry – and if she had to guess, the young woman would say that anger was directed straight at Harry.

Dumbledore responded, "I intend to do all I can, however matters such as this are incredibly difficult to deal with. I fully agree with you Molly, Harry simply cannot be left to his own devices. However, it would seem that he had invoked a little known legal clause that allows him to emancipate himself through the goblins at Gringotts if it is either in accordance with his previous guardian's wishes or to assume a head of house role for an ancient family. I do not know what part of this he has used, but the paper trail points in that direction."

"So, tell me again Albus…if he's done this according to the law, then exactly why do you want to reverse it?" growled Moody.

"Well…that is to say…Umm…Harry is at a critical stage right now and he needs our guidance…Voldemort wants to kill him and he needs our protection. Not only that but he isn't responsible enough to look after himself." Dumbledore replied, looking slightly flustered at actually being questioned on the matter…after all, these were _his_ people.

"That's not exactly true Albus" began McGonagall, "I have watched Potter over the past years, and never have I had the pleasure of meeting a more responsible young man. He may have a penchant for breaking the rules, but that is to help others. If he wants to be more independent then I, for one, will not stand in his way. Now do you want to tell us what this is really about? There's obviously a lot more to it."

Tonks couldn't agree more with Minerva's assessment, and if she didn't know all she would receive for her effort would be a stern glare, she could hug the other woman right now.

"Yes," began Dumbledore hesitantly "there is more to it…five minutes after I received that owl, another arrived. This time it was informing me that Harry Potter had officially requested to join the Wizengamot, effective immediately. This claim was preposterous! I will be informing him later today that his joke was highly inappropriate and unsuccessful."

At this, Tonks couldn't resist jumping in. "What was inappropriate about it Albus?" she asked innocently.

"Harry has attempted to claim a ridiculous amount of seats, which I might add he has no legal right to."

"Can I ask a question please?" pressed Tonks.

At Dumbledore's nod, she continued "We are all sitting here discussing him like he is some stupid little child that wouldn't know which way to hold his wand if someone didn't show him every time…if you want to have this conversation about Harry and what he's doing…why not bring in the only person who actually knows everything that Harry is doing?"

"Who do you suggest?" asked the old man.

"Merlin, I swear. For the supposed greatest wizard of the age, you sure are slow at times Dumbledore. If you want to know what is going on with Harry…then maybe you should actually talk to Harry about it!" she concluded.

And on the meeting went for quite some time with people arguing about what should or shouldn't be done, arguing for and against bringing Harry into the meeting to explain.

Until, for the first time in the meeting, Snape spoke up. "We cannot allow some foolish brat in to our meetings. Besides, this is an order meeting, he is far too young to be here." He finished with a sneer.

Getting highly frustrated, Tonks snapped "In that case, maybe someone could explain why there are 2 people here the same age as him, and one who is over a year younger." wondering what excuse the old bastard would come up with for it…though she knew or at least suspected after what she had heard in the lift that they were Dumbledore's pet spies in Harry's inner circle.

"They are here at my request, and we shall speak no further of it." Stated Dumbledore with an air of finality. "However, despite many valid protests, I believe that your suggestion has at least some merit, Ms. Tonks. I would like you to retrieve Mr. Potter from his relatives' house and bring him here at once." He finished sternly.

Bouncing from her seat, Tonks gave a mock salute, "Yes sir, be back before you know it!"

She left the room, before climbing the stairs, leaving the house and apparating back to Harry's bedroom in Little Whinging.

When she arrived, she saw Harry asleep on the bed and desperately wished she didn't have to disturb him for this, but it had to be done.

She walked over and sat down next to him on the bed and gently shook him. "Harry, come on, wake up."

He began to stir, soon opening his eyes. "Tonks? What's going on?" he asked sleepily.

"I've just come back from the order meeting…it's still going on but I've been sent to get you, it's probably going to be the only way to shut them up any time for the next week. You look a bit rough, you'll have to tell me about it later, but for now are you up for this?" she asked concernedly.

Rolling to his feet and shaking himself to wake up fully he replied "Yeah, I'm good. I've been waiting for a chance to vent a bit of anger towards something for a while now…Dumbledore seems as good a target as any, and what's even better is he deserves it." He finished with a slightly feral gleam to his eye. "Meet you outside Grimauld." He added before apparating soundlessly away…which he considered was pretty good for a first try, having learned all about the subject from his memory transfer from Ravenclaw and knowing instinctively he could do it.

Momentarily surprised, having no idea what had happened with Merlin and the Founders previously in the day, Tonks just stood there for a minute before gathering her wits and apparating back to the outside of headquarters.

When Harry arrived, he made a decision. If Dumbledore and the Order were going to cause problems for him, then he saw no reason why he should not return the favour in kind.

He had recently read about this, and had known he would have to do it really.

He approached the door and placed his hands upon it, before feeding magical energy into it and reciting an incantation.

"Ego vox senior quod vinco illae domus operor hic vindicatum imperium super is domus quod totus alica super is."

His hand and the door momentarily glowed and he knew that it had been successful as he momentarily felt a magical presence in his mind. He now had control over the house and all of the wards and enchantments on it and could control them with a mere thought.

By this time, Tonks was standing right behind him; she had recognised what he was doing as she had helped him find out what to do, so she merely squeezed his shoulder in reassurance that he was doing the right thing, before walking past him and into the building.

When they entered the kitchen, it was clear that everyone had descended back into the petty bickering from earlier. That is until they noticed that the two had arrived.

The first to react was Molly Weasley. "Harry JAMES POTTER WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING? YOU CA..."

At this point Harry waved his hand lazily in her direction, casting a wandless silencing charm…she continued ranting for about 20 seconds before realising that no sound was coming out.

"Hello everyone, Tonks says there's something you want to talk to me about." Began Harry. "Not that it's actually any of your business, but I suppose I can humour you for a few minutes. What do you want to know?" he asked disinterestedly.

To say there was outrage at this statement would a massive understatement, everyone was shouting at him and each other trying to get their opinion heard…the most humorous of which was Mrs. Weasley who was still not producing any sound as she did so, but for some reason appeared to think that if she tried hard enough then her voice would over power the charm…needless to say, she was wholly unsuccessful in this regard.

"SILENCE!!!" bellowed Dumbledore with the aid of a Sonorus charm.

Returning his voice to normal he continued, directly addressing Harry, "I would appreciate an explanation for your actions of late. It is highly inappropriate and dangerous for you to be going off and doing things on your own without consulting the order."

This was precisely the sort of thing Harry had expected…the old man trying to guilt trip him into playing things his way.

"And exactly why would I need to consult the order for this? Last time I checked the Order of the Phoenix was an illegal organisation who has an annoying habit of shoving their noses where they don't belong and are not welcome nor needed." He said calmly.

"The order," began Dumbledore "is a necessary group of concerned people. Your safety is our responsibility, and if you go off and do things without informing us then we cannot protect you. You will go to the ministry and repeal your emancipation and applications to the Wizengamot at once, you are not safe on your own and the Wizengamot is no place for a child such as yourself."

This irritated Harry immensely. "Did I ever _ask_ for the protection of the order? No, I don't believe I did. What's more, I don't think that your particular record of protecting me from danger is particularly good, headmaster. Or should I remind you about the teacher who had Voldemort in the back of his skull who tried to kill me and I ended up having to kill? How about the second teacher, who attempted to erase the memories of two students, both of us in this room now? Then we could go on to mention the fact that you allowed a basilisk to roam the halls of the school and I ended up having to fight and almost get killed by due to your inability to protect people. Maybe, while we're at it we should talk about me nearly getting kissed by a dementor right under your nose? What about the Death Eater teacher who got my name in the goblet of fire when you said there was no choice but for me to compete in the tournament, yet there was no magical contract, since I didn't enter it myself? What about the fact that you couldn't even tell the difference between that same death eater and someone who is supposed to be one of your closest friends and allowed him to send me straight to Voldemort. While we're on the subject of death eaters, how come you've still got one working for you and even in this room as we speak? Maybe you'd like to explain why you allowed a teacher to use an illegal torture device on students at school last year? Is _that_ your idea of protection headmaster?"

There was a stunned silence from every one in the room, as many hadn't even heard of most of the things that Harry had just listed.

"I take it you're not going to reply then Dumbledore? Well, now that you mention it, I might just go to the ministry…perhaps I could explain some of those things to them, perhaps I could also give them a list of the names of the people in this room who you have instructed to follow and spy on me, both those posing as friends as well as the supposed _guard duty_. I believe that if I could prove it, which I can, it would actually be enough to land the lot of you in Azkaban for a good while. And I have plenty more I could add to it. Now, what else do you want to talk about _professor?_" he finished, spitting the last word as though it left a foul taste behind.

"Harry, you are acting very irresponsibly, I'm afraid I must insist that you remain under order supervision for the remainder of the summer until your return to Hogwarts on September first."

"Get it through your thick skull. I am not your puppet, I will not go along with what you want and you cannot control me. Also, while I have you both here, Headmaster Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall, as the head of school and my house respectively I hereby inform you of my decision not to return to Hogwarts for my sixth year of education. I do this in accordance with ministry law stating that anyone may opt not to return to school after they have completed their OWLs." Stated Harry, showing no emotion on his face.

McGonagall, who had been watching with avid interest, and learning from Harry many of the things that Dumbledore had forbidden questions about from staff and order members alike, and was outraged at some of the things that the young man had gone through, chose to speak up.

"Thank you for giving us due notice, Mr. Potter. While I would personally have preferred you to return as you will be sorely missed in the castle, after your revelations here today I have to say that I think it is probably for the best. Albus, I will speak to you later. Good day everyone." She concluded before marching out of the door.

As soon as the door closed, Hermione jumped from her seat and rounded on Harry. "What do you mean you're not going back to school? Of course you are! You've still got 2 more years of important study and exams to take! What are you thinking?!"

"Hermione, I won't argue with you, education is important. However I can't afford to take the time at this point to attend school. Before you say anything else, consider the fact that I've got a homicidal maniac who wants nothing more than to see me dead right now, and I have no choice but to kill him…since no one seems willing to give me the training I need for that, I've found alternative sources."

"What do you mean you have to kill him lad?" asked Moody, both of his eyes fixed squarely on Harry.

Turning to Dumbledore, Harry said "I take it you never bothered telling them what they're risking their lives for?"

At Dumbledore's silence, Harry assumed he was correct and decided that if anyone had a right to know it was the people in this room with him.

"You all remember that prophecy? The one that you were guarding at the ministry and Voldemort went to get at the end of term?" at their various indications of assent he continued "Well, it was about me and him. Basically it said that either I kill him or he kills me, there is no other way it can end."

Harry had had quite some time to come to terms with this fact now, so it didn't really affect him having to tell the rest of them…it was just a fact of life for him now.

He did however notice that a few of the people present didn't appear shocked at all by this news…Lupin didn't even blink, Jones looked only mildly interested as though he had been explaining why he thought it would rain tomorrow, Snape just had his usual sneer in place, Ron, Hermione and Ginny all looked somewhat disinterested, which he took as further evidence that they weren't really his friends and there was something not right about them.

After a moment of silence in which the people who didn't actually already know were able to begin to digest the new information, Harry continued.

"I was asked to come here today for one reason and one reason only. Ever since the death of my parents, Dumbledore has controlled just about every aspect of my life; from abandoning me with relatives who abused, neglected and beat me, through to who I had as friends when I arrived at school, to forcing me into situations where my life was in imminent danger. The reason that he has called me here today is to try and take back that power over me, his actions have been unjust, and in many cases highly illegal and morally questionable, yet here he is, the supposed champion of the light, defeater of evil…forcing someone who he tries to convince every one is a child to fight and win the war for him so he can take credit, and then not even provide me with any training or weapons to do so." He continued, fully aware of how disgusted the majority of the room was looking at dumbledore's actions. He turned and looked at the old man, straight in the eyes. "I've got news for you, I will not play your games any longer, I will not submit to your pressures. I will however fight against Voldemort, but I will do it in my own way, and I will be prepared when I eventually face him. I'm not doing it because you say I have to or because some prophecy said I was destined to, but because it is the right thing to do and because it must be done. If anyone wants to help me do that, then I would most appreciate it, however I will not be lead blindly or lead others blindly.

"I had hoped it wouldn't come to this, however I cannot easily co-exist with the order as it stands now. Be warned Dumbledore, if you or any of your people stand in my way I will not be held responsible for my actions. As of this moment, the Order of the Phoenix is no longer welcome in this house, you are all hereby banished and may not enter without my personal permission." He finished, slightly glowing with energy.

As Harry finished his last sentence, everyone in the room except himself and Tonks were levitated from their seats and began rapidly moving towards the main door, other doors opening to clear a path and to add extra people to the chain.

When they were all clear of the front door it slammed shut behind them, and the house disappeared from their sight…the ancient wards established by the house of black were now fully active and they would not be able to re-enter…and Albus Dumbledore was dumped unceremoniously onto his ancient backside in the middle of the road along with the rest of his Order.

Back inside the kitchen, another person also fell to the floor, but in this case it was from laughter…Tonks was laughing so hard she couldn't even stand up (not that that was saying much considering her balance, but even so…).

"That was priceless" she gasped out, "the old man thought you were bluffing!!!"

Harry began to chuckle. "yeah, I guess it was pretty funny seeing him thrown out."

Regaining control of herself, Tonks asked, "So what happens now anyway? I mean they're gonna be pretty pissed off with you and they know where to find you at privet drive."

"Well, I think my time there is well and truly over…I'll go back there to pack once I'm done here then I'm going to go to Gringotts and grab the Portkey that is supposed to be in my family vault and see if this "Potter Manor" place is usable, if it is I'll stay there if not I'll start looking through some of the other houses I own…It's obviously up to you what you do and where you go, but if you want to come with, you're more than welcome." He finished with a smile.

Grinning she replied, "I'd love to go with you, and since I don't actually have my own place at the moment and before I came to you I was staying here, a roof voer my head would be much appreciated." Then thinking she asked, "wait, you said you would do that when you were finished here…what are you doing?" looking at him suspiciously, recognising the look on his face.

"Well…the way I see it, the Order of the Phoenix has left here for good and they just happened to…umm…forget…to pick up their stuff on the way out. Now, you'll know this better than me, but from the eavesdropping and spying some of us did last summer when we were here, I believe they keep a record of all meetings held? Well, I'd like to see just how deep Dumbledore's manipulations and controlling goes." He replied with a grin. "Oh, and I suppose we should send on any personal stuff that people left here…though in some cases it might not quite make the trip in tact, depending on what the transcripts say, if you get what I mean?" he finished with an evil glint in his eye.

Five minutes later, Tonks had showed Harry the cupboard where all of the meeting transcripts and other such documents were kept, unfortunately it had a protective ward on it that would only allow Dumbledore to open it.

After a few failed attempts Harry was getting sick of it. "Ok, stand back. Lets see what a Reducto just in the field of the ward but not aimed directly at it so nothing inside will be damaged does." He said.

When he tried, an extremely high powered spell struck the ward and it collapsed, allowing them to get at the contents.

Half an hour later, Harry was sat at the kitchen table once more and had read through a considerable chunk of the documents, and what he found enraged him.

Seeing this, Tonks sat next to him and put an arm around him. "What's wrong?" she asked gently.

"Nothing I guess…it's just as much as I suspected everything, this is the first actual proof of a lot of it…I suppose I was kinda clinging to the hope that it was all just a big misunderstanding. But it's all here…" he trailed off, passing several pieces of parchment to her.

She saw letters from Harry's supposed friends to Dumbledore, reporting on his movements and activities, presumably during the previous school year.

There were several letters addressed to Harry from Gringotts.

There were many reports from members of the order who had been reporting back about Harry and some other members of the order's activities.

She wondered how all this had happened without her knowing, until Harry passed her another sheet that contained a transcript of a conversation between Dumbledore, Snape, Lupin and Jones…In that conversation they discussed several other order members, including herself and Sirius, and were debating on exactly how much information to give them about some of the things that were going on at the time…including stealing money from Harry's vaults to fund order operations, having him tailed constantly, keeping him subservient, patterns to the movement of known death eaters that they decided to _watch_ and allowed to kill, information about several raids which were never acted upon, unspecified methods used to increase Dumbledore's influence at the ministry…the list of things mentioned in that conversation alone was more than enough to make her sick and promise herself to never have any involvement with the order again and to help Harry in any way she possibly could.

Harry rose from his seat. "Be back soon, I'm going to start moving some people's stuff down here so we can send it through the floo." He said, without emotion, before leaving the room.

Tonks sat and continued reading through some of the things they had found, and was appalled to think that she had been a part of all of this.

Approximately fifteen minutes later, Harry returned with a large collection of beat up personal effects, some of which had been blasted beyond recognition.

"Whose were those?" she asked quietly, though from the sheer volume of it, she had a pretty good clue.

"Weasleys and Hermione…It's going to the Burrow, just wanted to let them have some idea what I think of them at the same time." He replied calmly, as though destroying people's property and sending it back to them in pieces was an every day occurrence for him.

The process was repeated with many more people's belongings, the only ones that were sent back intact were the ones owned by people who they had no direct evidence had done any wrong towards Harry.

Once that was completed, they agreed it was time to leave and were on their way out of the door when they heard something behind them.

They turned around and saw Kreacher, the Black family's crazy house-elf.

Immediately, Harry saw red.

"You foul little bastard," he growled "You betrayed Sirius and got him killed!" he finished before pulling his wand and casting a spell he had read about…it burned the victim from the inside out until all that was left was a pile of ash.

Kreacher was hit square in the chest, he lived for all of 15 agonising seconds.

His work done and his beloved godfather avenged, Harry turned back around and walked out of the door preparing to apparate back to his bedroom in Surrey.

Tonks, being fully aware of what the insane elf had done and having never particularly liked it in the first place, could fully understand and justify Harry's actions so she just followed him out, after casting a quick Scourgify to clean up the mess it had left on the floor.

Half an hour later, the pair had cleaned out Harry's bedroom at number 4 and apparated into Diagon Alley, having each used their morphing abilities to create a disguise so as not to tip off any order members who may be around.

They entered the bank and were escorted to see Griphook straight away upon request.

"May I help you?" asked the goblin curiously.

"hi, yeah, I need to get something out of one of my vaults but I've no idea which one." Harry stated, then realising the source of the goblin's confusion shifted his appearance back to normal. "Sorry for the disguise, there's a few people I need to avoid right now."

"I understand sir. What is it you wish to withdraw?"

"You mentioned a reusable portkey that would take me straight to Potter Mannor…any idea where I could find that?" asked Harry hopefully.

"Of course, it is located in the Potter family chambers…this way." Was the reply, as Griphook lead them through the door that went to the tunnel system.

This cart ride was even longer and wilder than Harry's previous one, but 20 minutes later, after going through several fake walls, illusionary waterfalls and seeming pillars of fire, none of which were actually there (though Harry and Tonks were each privately certain that anyone who was unauthorised would find them to be all too real), not to mention the countless twists and turns of the track, they finally arrived by the entrance to another one of the caverns containing highly guarded vaults.

"Family Chamber 12, Potter" stated Griphook "As you can see, we take security of these types of vault _very seriously, _I believe you will agree that this is probably the safest place in the world."

Unlike Harry's last encounter with the high security section, in this cave there was only one vault door instead of the row of them, and instead of a collection of dragons guarding it, there was something much worse, there before them were two Nundu, one sitting at either side of the door.

Instantly recognising the beasts Tonks spoke up, "Please tell me that they aren't about to attack us?" she said in a near whisper.

Griphook found this highly amusing, "Oh, if we attempt to approach the door they will most certainly attack…Lord Potter will be perfectly safe and unharmed, but anyone without Potter blood in their veins will be killed if they try to gain entry. That is why you and I shall be remaining right here." He said with a rather frightening smile.

Snapped out of the staring contest he had been having with one of the creatures, Harry finally spoke, "Well, I knew that Gringotts took security seriously…I guess I just never realised _ how_ seriously…so how exactly do I first get past them, and then how do I get into the vault? I thought only a goblin could open them?"

"Ordinarily you would be correct, however because of your family's…ah, unique security arrangements," he said with a gesture to the leopard like beings, "the door was reprogrammed so that only people of your lineage would be able to open it instead. Approach the door, they will sniff at you as you get closer, but will not touch you once they realise who you are…then place your hand upon the door, it will open and you can enter…the portkey is on a table on the left as you go in, as are the ones for the other properties in the Potter estate and your family ring."

Harry complied and, while it was rather disconcerting walking past animals that were sniffing at you when you knew if they chose they could kill you with a breath, tear you to shreds or simply step on you, and there wasn't a damn thing you could do about it, he reached the door in total safety, as promised.

He placed his hand upon the door, as he had seen Griphook do previously and it melted into nothingness.

Inside the vault, Harry was stunned. The room he was in was easily 4 times the size of the great hall at Hogwarts, and there were many doors leading to other rooms, indicating that this was merely a small portion of the vault.

But that wasn't what stunned Harry the most…the room was filled with piles of gold, silver and bronze as well as many precious jewels and stones, some he recognised like diamonds, emeralds and rubies, some easily the size of his fist, some tiny that looked to be used for jewellery and still some that were bigger than Harry's head, others he had no idea what they were, but they looked expensive.

It had been one thing to read the numbers on a piece of parchment and know that he had a lot of money, but quite another to see a large portion of it right in front of him, but he was quite sure that if he had cared to open any of the doors he would find that what he could currently see was only a small fraction…yet, it was more than he had ever even dreamed about until recently.

Remembering why he was there, Harry turned to the table, and sure enough there were many portkeys there…and it appeared that they actually doubled as the keys to the properties themselves. They were all neatly arranged in rows and labelled, Harry found the one he wanted (a large ornate key made of gold and encrusted with about a dozen of the small jewels of various colours).

He also picked up the ring that was on the table with them, he had only been half paying attention to what Griphook had said but remembered something about him saying it was a _Family Ring_, whatever that meant.

He filled his money bag up and then exited the chamber, the door reappearing behind him immediately. The Nundus watched him as he approached their position and sniffed at him again, before doing something that Harry might have considered funny at a later time.

The leopard like creatures that were bigger than elephants and one of the most feared animals in the magical world began to purr and gently nudge against him like you would expect a pet cat to do.

Unsure what to do, Harry did the only logical thing (though one could make an argument for running being highly logical at this point), he began to stroke them and scratch behind their ears, at which point they rolled over in pleasure. After a minute, Harry resumed walking to the cart, not quite believing what had just happened.

When he arrived at the cart, it was to see a very shocked and speechless Tonks with her mouth hanging open in disbelief and a very amused Griphook, who was smiling approvingly.

"I see you claimed your family ring, sir." Stated the goblin.

"Umm…I guess…And I also think that even though we're kinda in a rush, when we get back up to the surface you and I need to have a little chat about what the hell that ring does." Said Harry, rather nervously.

The goblin merely bowed, indicating they should be leaving.

Another eventful cart ride later and they were back in Griphook's office and Tonks had never once regained control of herself enough to speak until this point.

Grabbing him into a bone crushing hug she murmured, "Bloody hell Harry, you really don't do anything by half do you? Nundus?!"

Startled, Harry simply wrapped his arms around her, patting her on the back, "Yeah, but I'm fine."

The clearing of a throat brought them back to the reality of the matter. Harry thought that they had already been too long as it was, but wanted a quick explanation of the ring.

"Griphook, what's so special about this ring? And why did it make them act like that?" he asked, perplexed.

"The family rings are an old tradition, they mark you as the head of a powerful family. Each one bears the family crest. It is custom for the patriarch of any family to wear the rings at all times, especially when in public. I apologise, sir…I made the faulty assumption that you would already be aware of them, I suppose that is another issue to raise when we find out who has been tampering with your life and accounts here. Many of the rings also have powerful enchantments on them…mostly protective charms and the like. I will have all of yours ready for your next visit if you would like?" came the response.

"Yeah, sure, but I have more families than fingers…how am I supposed to wear them all?" asked Harry.

Smiling, Griphook replied, "the rings all go on one finger, they will merge into one and you scroll through the family crests by touching it."

"Ok, well we have to be going now, I'll see you another time…hopefully there won't be a reason for me to be back here before my meeting with your Director." Stated Harry, who privately thought he had been spending too much time with goblins recently.

"Ah, regarding that…if you could arrive an hour earlier than scheduled, we have the official reading of Mr. Black's Will, though the contents are already active it is necessary to have a reading to inform the other parties involved of any inheritance they may have."

This was unexpected, but Harry merely accepted it with a nod of his head.

Both him and Tonks touched the portkey and it activated, sending them off to the unknown location of Potter Manor.


	11. Chaos in the Order

**Chapter 10: Chaos in the Order**

Meanwhile, after being forcefully removed from their former headquarters at Grimauld Place, the Order was in disarray.

Eventually, Dumbledore managed to calm everyone enough to instruct them to reassemble in the Great Hall at Hogwarts and hand out portkeys to take people there.

When everyone was settled, 20 minutes later, at a round table conjured in the middle of the hall, Dumbledore began again.

"My friends, you have just seen exactly why it is unsafe for us to allow Harry to continue independently…he is unsafe, unstable and uncontrolled. We need to bring him back under our control immediately, but frankly I am somewhat at a loss. Suggestions?" he asked hopefully.

At this point, Moody spoke up, "Actually Albus, before we get to that there's a couple of questions I wouldn't mind getting answered and I'm sure a fair few others have similar thoughts." He began, "Just how much of what the Potter boy said back there was true?"

Looking somewhat uncomfortable with the turn of events, Dumbledore looked around for support but among many of the faces there was an obviously strong desire to hear the answer. He also knew that if he lied, the old auror would see straight through it and probably call him on it in front of the others.

"Well…I admit that the basic facts are all true, however his interpretation of events was sorely mistaken." He said carefully. "Everything I have done has been for the greater good, Harry needs to be moulded into the right sort of person and that is what I was doing. I fear he has now strayed from that path and may be turning against us."

At this point there was an outburst of shouted questions and insults flying in all directions. Many in the Order had previously seen it as the only way to do good and fight against evil, and they had seen Dumbledore as a shining beacon of hope and all things right in the world.

In the past hour, Harry Potter had destroyed that illusion of the seemingly omnipotent old man and revealed him as little more than a manipulative fraud. Several were now unsure they wanted anything to do with the Order as it stood. And many were remembering and seriously considering Harry's offer to join with him and actually do something about Voldemort and his death eaters as opposed to Dumbledore who seemed to exist to have meetings and preach about how they needed to convince them to abandon their wicked ways. In comparison, Harry's offer was looking very tempting, and many decided early on that they would be contacting him once they left here to get more information.

When most people had shouted themselves out (including Molly Weasley, who had only just had her voice reinstated…much to several people's amusement as they had often wanted to do just that to her), Kingsley Shacklebolt asked a question that was on many people's minds.

"If this prophecy said that Potter is the only one who can stop Voldemort, then what exactly can we accomplish, considering he's made it quite plain that he won't work with us? And also Albus, I think you should know that if you attempt to do anything to interfere with his legal standing and freedom, I will be forced to report you. We should be helping him, not trying to control him."

When he had finished, Ron Weasley spoke up for the first time, and what he said shocked those who didn't know that he had been bribed into being friends with Harry. "He's just an attention seeking bastard, that one. Lock him away and take his money to use against you-know-who. When we're ready to end it and if he wasn't lying about the prophesy then drag him back out and make him fight…he claims to be able to do it, and personally I'd love to see him try."

Several people around the table nodded in agreement with this, while others looked appalled at the mere notion of the idea.

Flitwick spoke up next, "What is your opinion on this matter Albus?" asked the tiny professor, managing to keep all emotion from his features, while inside wanting to curse the red-headed boy into the middle of next year for even suggesting it.

Dumbledore replied casually, assuming that he had found another source of support in the matter. "Well Fillius," he began "while I do not agree with Mr. Weasley's choice of language, I do agree with his sentiment…Harry has to remain safe and should be confined to that end until he is needed to fight against Tom. I do not believe he needs any special training as I do not believe that he will defeat him using magic as we know it, I believe that the source of his power lies in his emotions not his knowledge of spells." He concluded with a benign smile.

Looking livid with his boss, the minuscule man stood from his seat and looked at Dumbledore before saying, "If that is the official position of the Order of the Phoenix, then I no longer wish to be a part of it. I'm sorry, Albus, I truly am, but I cannot support you in this matter and I hereby officially inform you that I am terminating my membership in the Order. I wish you the best of luck in your goals. Good day." He finished before walking out of the door.

There was a moment of silence while everyone considered this turn of events.

Then, Moody stood up "Albus, you're my friend, I respect you, but I can't play these games anymore…I've done some damn distasteful things in my life, but I will not be a part of this. I'll be contacting Potter and asking where I can sign up with him…seems he's the only one that actually has a chance of winning this thing and he also seems like a hell of a lot better leader and person than you are. I urge the rest of you to do the same." He said before limping from the room with a dull thud marking every other step.

Over the next few minutes, Hagrid, Shacklebolt, Pomfrey, Sprout, the Weasley twins and Dung Fletcher all decided to part ways with the rest of the order, all deciding to contact Harry and try to continue the fight in the right way.

Dumbledore knew that the order was now in ruins…those that had left had been key members, including some of his best fighters. He could probably salvage it given time, but for now the order was severely reduced in its functionality, and as loath as he was to admit it, he knew that when word spread through the general ranks of the order, others would likely follow suit.

Trying to save face, Dumbledore rose to his feet and said, "Well, I thank those of you who remain for standing by me and doing what is ultimately for the best. We will have a full order meeting tomorrow afternoon here. Until then, I think I speak for all of us when I say it has been a very long day and we should take a break.

Within half an hour, two sets of owls carrying encoded messages had been dispatched to all the members of the order of the phoenix, one telling them about the meeting the next day and the other informing them about Dumbledore's actions and plans, as well as urging them to contact Harry and offer their support.

Within two hours of that being accomplished, there were many owls flying from all parts of the country carrying letters to Dumbledore stating that they wanted nothing more to do with him or the order (as well as some rather colourful statements, many addressing the issue of his questionable parentage). There were an equal number of owls also heading to Potter Manor, offering assistance to Harry, offering to join with him and asking how they could help.

The Order had been brought to chaos, its ranks decimated and reduced to approximately a third of its original size.

Harry had gained much support and many allies, though he didn't know it yet, he had truly become a force to be reckoned with in the wizarding world.


	12. Potter Mannor, OWLs and Animagus Trainin

**Chapter 11: Potter Manor, OWLs and Animagus Training**

When Harry and Tonks took the protkey from Griphook's office, they arrived in front of a rather ornate gate set into a wall and flanked by stone gargoyles which seemed to be watching them (and Harry's new gift of mage sight confirmed the fact that they were enchanted in some way, he presumed they would come alive and attack intruders), also the area was covered in wards so powerful they could actually feel them.

They assumed that this was the entrance into the expansive Potter estate. As they approached the gate, Harry saw there was a keyhole in it, and having no better idea of how to get in, he placed the portkey in the lock and turned…to discover that it was indeed the correct thing to do as the gate swung open.

They followed the path in what they supposed was the direction of the house, and 10 minutes later, the dominating structure came into sight. It appeared to be of ancient design, more like a (not so) small castle fortress than a house really.

Eventually they arrived at the large, solid oak, doors, to find that there was no door handle of any description, nor a key hole or any other method to gain entry.

After a moment's pause, Tonks spoke up from beside Harry. "The house has been abandoned for a long time, so it has locked itself down…it's a feature that some of the very old family homes have. To get in, all you have to do is to claim the house the same as you did at Grimauld place earlier and it should let you in." she explained with a shrug.

Harry complied, and when he completed the ritualistic incantation for claiming a dwelling as your own, the doors swung open to admit them.

The room that they walked into was an enormous, yet somehow elegant, entrance hall, with marble flooring and a large ornate staircase carpeted it red leading up to the next level.

After standing for a moment, taking in the view, by mutual silent agreement they proceeded to check out the rooms on that floor and then all the others.

On the ground floor they found a formal dining room that could easily seat 100, which opened up into a large ball room. There was also a formal sitting room.

On the first floor was a less formal dining area and a sitting room, obviously intended for use with family and friends, whereas the lower one was for playing politics and dealing with people you would rather duel than entertain.

They also came across a massive library, so large in fact that it would easily put the Hogwarts one to shame, being approximately 4 times the size.

The room next to that was a large study/office area which had doors to both the library as well as out into the hall.

The Second floor had a large room that was obviously designed for training and duelling, both magically and with weapons (of which there was a vast collection lining the walls). It also had eight bedrooms of fairly large size, there were also four bathrooms, each connected to two of the bedrooms.

The Third floor was comprised entirely of bed and bathrooms, having 12 and 9 respectively. There were 3 sets of two rooms which were connected as on the previous floor as well as six rooms that were of a larger size and had their own bathroom.

The fourth and final floor had four bed and bath combinations that were even larger than the previous ones, the bedroom easily being 70'x50'. The final door on this floor was to an even bigger room, approximately twice the size with a bed that looked as though it could sleep a dozen with room to spare. Harry surmised that this was the master bedroom and that the others on this floor would probably be intended for children and other members of the family to use.

All in all the house was very impressive, and Harry was sure that on any other occasion he would have been extremely proud to call it his own. At this moment in time however, he was exhausted considering he hadn't fully recovered from his exertions with his new teachers' power boosts before having to go to the order meeting…that in itself had also been tiring as well as then going to Gringotts which was not only physically tiring but also mentally. Then he had just walked through this entire house, which was no mean feat either.

"Well, I don't know about you but right now I'm just gonna crawl into bed…unpacking and sorting stuff out can wait 'til morning." Said Harry, matching actions to words and getting undressed before climbing under the covers and into the middle of the gigantic bed.

Smiling seductively, Tonks walked towards him, removing her clothes as she went. "Want some company in there?" she asked in a low voice.

Staring at her now nude form, which he had never fully gotten used to seeing (probably because she changed it everyday in one way or another…this time she had blue hair on top and pink down below, was very thin and had very large breasts, obviously designed to turn Harry on) he could only nod.

She climbed into the bed and straddled Harry's naked body, before bending down and kissing him passionately and grinding her pussy and ass into his rapidly expanding cock.

He groaned and started pushing up against her, increasing the contact and slid his hands up her body to cup and squeeze her tits and tease her nipples with his fingers.

Sliding slowly down his body, Tonks licked along his chest and stomach and then enveloped Harry's cock in her warm, wet mouth, sucking hard.

Soon after, she released him for a moment while she spun around and pushed her pussy into his face, before resuming her efforts.

Knowing a good thing when he got it, Harry began to franticly lick at her moist opening.

They continued like this for several minutes until Harry exploded straight into her mouth and down her throat. This was enough to send Tonks over the edge and she had her own orgasm moments later.

Tonks crawled up beside Harry and snuggled up against his body with her head on his chest.

Within a matter of a couple of minutes, they both drifted into a deep sleep, drained from their long days as well as their recent activities.

Many hours later, the couple awoke to the sounds of many owls beating at the windows of the room they were in.

"woz goinon?" yawned Tonks intelligently.

"Owls at the windows." Came Harry's reply.

Figuring that there was really no other solution, Harry walked from one window to the next, opening them all.

Harry and Tonks quickly threw some clothes on and worked together for several minutes to remove all of the letters from the birds who had lined up patiently to await the retrieval of their burden.

"Will you help me go through all this lot? I have no idea why so many people would be writing to me on one day!" Harry exclaimed, once all of the birds were on their way.

He tore one open and began to read:

Potter,

I listened very carefully to what you said to Dumbledore at the meeting and to what his reasoning was once you had left.

I don't approve of what he's done to you or the way he is working.

He isn't the person I thought I knew.

I know you have no reason to trust me. I'd be disappointed in you if you did so without proof. But you should know, I and many others have now left the Order.

I don't know if you will or not, but if you have use of my services, send me an owl and we'll arrange a meet…somewhere public…to discuss it.

Awaiting your reply.

A. Moody

This pretty much set the tone of the majority of the letters (except the others didn't come across quite so paranoid.) There were however, ones from other people who didn't support him at all and were trying to convince him to go crawling back to Dumbledore begging for forgiveness…these were promptly burned.

Tonks found much the same thing, and working together they compiled a list of names of people to talk to and sound out about where they actually stood…neither was stupid enough to take this at face value, but it was interesting.

When he only had a few more to read, Harry came across one that he immediately knew was different. It was sealed with the crest of the ministry of magic with the letters "W.E.B." stamped over it.

This was the letter that he had both been dreading and hoping for.

His OWL results had arrived.

Seeing what he had and also recognising it, Tonks came and sat next to him, wrapping her arm round him and wanting to look over his shoulder while he read them.

"They're not gonna open themselves you know, loverboy. You've gotta read 'em sometime." She said cheekily.

Steeling himself for the worst, Harry tore them open and read:

Dear Mr. H. J. Potter,

Please find below the results for the Ordinary Wizarding Level (O.W.L.) examinations you took at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry this summer.

Grade Key:

Pass Grades

O – outstanding (80%)

E – exceeds expectations (70%, 80%)

A – acceptable (60%, 70%)

Fail Grades

P – poor (50%, 60%)

D – dreadful (40%, 50%)

T – troll (40%)

Please note: Where appropriate the result will be broken into practical and theory portions. The results will be displayed in the following format:

Subjecttheory gradepractical gradeoverall percentoverall grade

Results for candidate HARRY JAMES POTTER:

AstronomyEA73E

Care of Magical CreaturesEO82O

CharmsOO91O

Defence Against the Dark ArtsOO110O

DivinationEA64A

HerbologyOE79E

History of MagicPN/A55P

PotionsOO90O

TransfigurationOO95O

Congratulations Mr. Potter, you have received 8/9 OWLs.

Additionally, it should be noted that you scored the highest score in Defence Against the Dark Arts in recorded history (over 60 million students worldwide), and it was only the second time that bonus points have ever been awarded in any examination.

If you should wish to contest any of your results then please inform us as quickly as possible.

Likewise, should you wish to test in additional subjects that were either not offered or not taken at your school then you should contact the Wizarding Examinations Board (W.E.B) at your earliest convenience to make arrangements.

Yours Sincerely

Prof. G Marchbanks

(chief examiner, W.E.B.)

Harry was amazed at his results, and was sure some one had made a mistake. Once he had read it several times and double checked that the parchment was indeed addressed to him, he broke out into a huge grin.

Tonks, who had read the letter along with him, gave him a quick kiss.

"Congratulations, Harry." She said, smiling at him. "You did way better than I did when I was at school." She added pulling a sour face, that just made him laugh.

When they had both sat down and calmed enough to talk seriously, Tonks asked a question that hadn't even crossed Harry's mind.

"When you've got all this training stuff done, you should test in the other OWLs and see if they'll let you do your NEWTs early, that way you won't have to worry about them later, should you consider getting a job anytime…what do you think?"

"Do you think I would actually be able to take them? I mean I've never studied the other subjects and NEWTs are really hard." He began before she cut him off.

"Harry, were you born dense, or do you practice it? You have the bloody founders of Hogwarts and MERLIN HIMSELF teaching you!! And you want to know if you'll be ready to take a few OWLs and NEWTs?!?!" she asked in total disbelief.

At this point Harry blushed deeply, evidently he hadn't thought of it like that. Sighing and deciding to get it over with, Harry said "You don't even know half of it." And proceeded to explain what had happened the previous morning, the power boost and the transfer of memories.

At first, Tonks didn't know what to say. She wasn't really the jealous type when it came to power and ability, she knew she was above average and that was good enough for her, so there was no problem with that. No, the problem was that she just hoped there wouldn't be any negative side effects for Harry, and that he wouldn't get tempted by the power and stray to the Dark side (though she doubted he would allow that to happen).

Eventually, she decided to take the practical perspective. "That's great really, it should really help with everything that is to come. Well so long as you learn to control everything properly." She added.

Sighing he replied "Yeah, I know…since yesterday morning I've had to make a real effort to hold back almost all of my power when I've done any spells…hopefully with time it will be easier."

Seeing that it was still relatively early, Tonks walked over to some of the things they'd brought with them and started putting together two breakfasts.

Once they were finished eating, Tonks asked Harry, "Would you mind if I borrowed Hedwig for a while?"

Pretending to look thoughtful, Harry replied "Well, that depends…what're you gonna do to her?"

"Hmm…well I was thinking of tying something to her and throwing her out the window…it might be kinda shaped like an envelope…" she said, playing along.

"Ok, I guess that's fine. Who you writing to? Or am I being too nosy there?" he asked carefully.

"Nah, it's fine…just wanted to write a quick note to my parents telling them I'll probably be out of touch for a while but that I'll see them at the will reading." She replied casually.

Harry paled at this. It wasn't the mention of the will, he knew that was inevitable and had been prepared for that for a while now. It was the realization that Tonks' parents would be there and that he'd probably have to talk to them…and that was one conversation he wasn't looking forward to…I mean what was he supposed to say? "Hi, Mr and Mrs Tonks, I'm the guy who's been sleeping with your daughter"? he grimaced at the thought.

Watching him out of the corner of her eye, and guessing at what was bothering him, Tonks said. "If that look is because you are worried about having to meet my parents, then don't worry, they're nice people and I'm sure you'll get on fine…granted, it might come as a bit of a shock to them that you're my boyfr…" she trailed off growing embarrassed before speaking again, "Sorry, that could have been a bit forward of me…we never actually talked about it, I mean I know we've been sleeping together and have been doing stuff with each other, but are we actually together or not?" she asked, uncharacteristically nervous and shy.

Blushing madly, but knowing that really this conversation was past due, Harry replied, "Umm…I don't know. I mean I'd like to be if you would but I won't push for it if you'd rather not."

Launching herself at him, Tonks pulled Harry into a massive hug and gave him a kiss that blew his mind before crying "YES! Of course I want to!" and kissing him again.

Some time later, when they had recovered and had a shower (which took considerably longer than it should have since each insisted on _thoroughly _washing the other's body), the pair headed down to the training room they had seen the previous day.

No sooner had Harry closed the door behind them than Merlin appeared in the room.

"Greetings, young ones. I trust you are well?" asked the spirit with a smile. "I see we have had a change of venue since last we visited…well, looking around I think this will be for the better as far as our work is concerned." He said happily.

"Good morning Merlin. Yeah, this is apparently my family's traditional home. So, what are we going to work on today?" asked Harry eagerly.

The old man smiled widely at the teen's enthusiasm. "Well, as you recall from our talk yesterday I am going to be covering several topics with you. I thought that I would begin with the one I believe will be easiest for you and one I sense you would vastly enjoy. I believe today we will cover the animagus transformation."

At this, Harry got a massive grin on his face, this was something he had wanted to do since his third year when he first learned about them and that his dad and Sirius had done it.

"I know I can't actually transform 'cos I've tried before, but do either of you mind if I watch?" asked Tonks.

Neither did so they began.

"Now, I know you have seen an animagus transform before so you know some of the basic mechanics of how it works." Began Merlin, slipping into 'teacher' mode. "It is simply a piece of wandless magic in which you focus your magic inwards towards the core of your being while focusing on the animal's form.

"Now, as I'm sure you are coming to expect at every turn, there is something special about your abilities." At this, Harry rolled his eyes and muttered something along the lines of 'it figures'. "You are what is called a 'vertomagus' or a transformer. What this means is that you can assume any shape you wish. This happens whenever someone possess both the skills of animagus and metamorphmagus, the powers merge together to form the third, more potent version of the changing magics."

Surprisingly, Harry seemed to take this in his stride…then again, it wasn't exactly the most shocking news he had received in the past few days.

"Ok, so how do I do this then?" he asked.

"Well, the first thing you should know is that I had this ability as well…in fact, I, like you, had practically every special magical ability that is known to some degree or another. But, I digress. You simply have to fix in your mind's eye how you want to look after the transformation…the same way you did when you thought you were using ordinary metamorph powers. Now, altering your appearance while in human form is the easy bit, forcing your entire body to change is more difficult. Becoming an animal will vary in difficulty depending on how different the form is to your natural one, and becoming an inanimate object will be harder still, but I believe you should be able to manage all of these tasks to some extent within the day.

"We shall begin. You have already fairly mastered the ability to change you human appearance, due to the tutelage of your fair maiden here" he continued with a nod and a smile towards Tonks, who was only slightly offended by being referred to as a 'fair maiden', "so next we shall perform the animal transformations. Choose an animal and focus an image of it in your mind's eye…but be aware of your surroundings, I would not recommend one that relies on water to breathe for instance." At this, the young couple chuckled slightly, Tonks in amusement and Harry out of nerves.

"Do not worry my child. The change back to human form is far easier than it's counterpart, so you will not be stuck. Now, focus on the image and force your magic inwards and imagine yourself as that animal." Instructed the old wizard.

Harry complied, trying to decide on the animal. Deciding to pick something fairly simple, Harry pictured a cat.

He followed his teacher's instructions and moments later felt a strange feeling of compression and expansion in his body for about a second before he opened his eyes and saw that everything was suddenly much bigger.

Merlin and Tonks both congratulated him on his achievement, neither had expected him to get it on the first try, but just as Harry was no longer shocked to learn he was special in terms of magical ability, those surrounding him were no longer shocked when he achieved the impossible.

Harry was walking around, getting used to this new form, all of his senses were heightened and he was rather enjoying the experience.

Then, wanting a closer look, Tonks picked him up, and Harry, not expecting this turn of events, let out a loud screeching meowing sound, much to the young woman's amusement. "Awe, poor kitty! Did I frighten you?" she said in a patronising voice.

Harry had had enough of this after a few minutes and decided to change things a bit. _Well, if she wants to play with a cat…_he thought.

Moments later, Tonks found that she had her arms around, not a cute little black cat like she had previously, she was now holding a particularly large golden lion, which promptly roared at the top of it's lungs before brushing against her, knocking her to the ground with ease.

By this point, Merlin was outright laughing at the antics of the pair in front of him.

Harry crawled along Tonks' body, pinning her down and holding his face near her own, bearing his teeth and growling low in his throat…all in all it was enough to make the young auror wish she hadn't wound him up earlier.

Deciding she had been punished enough, Harry got off her and changed back to human form.

"Bravo, Harry!" said Merlin "I had hoped you would realise you could change from one to another without having to become human in between. And Miss Tonks, what does this teach us?" he asked as though talking to a small child, "Ah, yes, never provoke him in one form because he can instantly become anything he wants…and some things aren't quite as cute and cuddly as even the lion was." He finished with a grin.

"That lion was not _cute and cuddly._" Muttered Tonks, but not quiet enough.

"Harry, I think we need to teach your young lady friend a bit of a lesson." He said with a wicked gleam in his eyes. "by the way, when I said you could become any creature I was also including magical ones….perhaps you can think of something that Miss Tonks might find a bit more threatening than a lion."

It took a moment for Harry to realise what Merlin was asking him to do, he then thought back over all the magical creatures he knew of. His decision made, Harry changed.

Tonks, who hadn't really been paying attention, was momentarily paralyzed with fear when she looked up and came face to face with a manticore, one of the most dangerous creatures in existence. She was afraid, that was, until she actually looked properly and recognised the face as a distorted version of Harry's natural one.

"Still think the lion was scary?" he asked her with a grin, that would have looked innocent enough on a real human but in this form it did little but bare his razor sharp teeth.

The young woman could only shake her head.

Back in his real form, Harry sent her a satisfied smirk, which she returned with a rather crude hand gesture.

"Well, you seem to have the hang of that aspect." Said Merlin, trying to regain some semblance of control over the situation. "Perhaps you would like to try the transformation into an inanimate object? Remember, you will still have awareness and will still feel things after these changes, you just will be a different shape and in most cases unable to move, unless that object has the ability in one form or another."

Harry thought about this and, again, decided to go with something he knew well.

Moments later, in place of Harry there was a large, comfortable sofa, which Tonks promptly sat on…and was then surprised, some what pleasantly, when it changed back to Harry and they ended up tangled together on the floor with her on top of him.

The three of them spent the next couple of hours working together on this, having a quick break for the two living people to have lunch, improving Harry's speed and accuracy in the transformations.

Eventually though, it was decided that Harry had gotten as far as Merlin could instruct him, and that the only way for him to improve would be through practice, patience and dedication, which would all take time.

Before he left Merlin spoke one final time, "I am extraordinarily pleased with the way in which you have progressed today, I was expecting it to take several more hours yet for you to even have the basics down, and months to reach the level you are at…I suppose the amount of raw power at your disposal makes it much easier. I will be watching how you progress in your lessons with the others over the next few days and you will be informed the day before our next lesson what we will be studying together. Tomorrow you will be learning under Godric, I believe he is going to be instructing you in the art of sword fighting, and he will make sure you can fight…he is unlikely to let you go until you can beat him in a fight." Seeing the confusion on the young man's face he continued "I know you have not seen us doing so, but if we want to we can temporarily become solid enough to hold objects so he will be able to fight you, however unlike you, he cannot be injured…I suggest you learn quickly to enhance your reflexes." He finished with a smile that made it clear there was more to it but that he wasn't going to be explaining any time soon.

"Ok, I'll keep that in mind. Thanks a lot for everything today" replied Harry.

After a few more pleasantries were exchanged and Harry promised to keep practicing, Merlin left the young couple alone.

The pair spent a couple of hours writing letters in response to the ones Harry had received that morning, the general message they gave was that the support was greatly appreciated and that yes, he would welcome the help, but that they couldn't be too careful and would need proof that the people weren't just there to spy and report back. It also gave a time and place to meet the following week.

That done, Harry did some more practice at changing forms, before long taking requests from Tonks, much to her amusement.

They had a late meal and then set about putting their possessions away, Tonks having retrieved hers from Grimauld place the previous day, and making lists of anything else they thought they would need…including more food.

While completing this last task, they came across a door that they had obviously missed the previous day on the ground floor.

It lead down to a basement which contained a potions lab and fully stocked supply room, complete with some very rare ingredients.

There was also a rather expansive wine cellar, and even though neither particularly knew anything about different types of wine, they could tell that these were all very old and very expensive…and promised themselves they would be sampling this stash in the near future, as both had enjoyed the results of the last time they had gotten drunk.

Another door took them still further underground into a corridor with many solid metal doors leading off it. Further inspection revealed that these doors were in fact very secure holding cells, who's doors could not be magically opened or affected by spell fire of any description due to some excellent ward work.

Further exploration took them to yet another subterranean level, this time a single room, the size of an entire floor of the house, which could be locked down and acted as a safe room should the house's security ever be compromised.

Done with their explorations of the house for the day, the couple returned early to the bedroom to further their exploration of each other.


	13. Swords, Books and Familiars

**Chapter 12: Swords, Books and Familiars.**

The following morning when Harry and Tonks had got ready to begin the day, they each headed into the training room again.

Tonks had had a bit of experience with hand to hand combat and wanted chance to brush up on her skills. And Harry was happy to accept anything that delayed his one on one fight against the founder who was famous as a ruthless warrior.

When Gryffindor appeared in front of them, he looked around before speaking. "Good day to you both. Merlin informed me that you had moved to another house, but I never thought it would be here…" he said trailing off.

"You know about this house?" asked Harry, surprised.

The founder laughed. "Know about it? I helped build this place with my own hands." He replied proudly. "But that can wait for another time. We are here today to cover sword fighting and if I have time any other weapons and unarmed combat."

For the next couple of hours, Harry and Tonks learned the basic movements and techniques needed for effective sword work, despite Godric's initial objection that women should not carry swords…at which point Tonks promptly threatened him with a nice little exorcism spell that aurors learned, and he quickly relented.

After some time at this, and once they were sufficiently skilled, they were instructed to face off against each other.

This took nearly 15 minutes of trading blows before Harry was eventually declared the winner by landing a strike that, had the blades not been enchanted not to make actual contact for training purposes, would have neatly separated Tonks' head from her body…effectively rendering her useless in terms of fighting.

Then came the moment Harry had been dreading: him against Godric Gryffindor.

Ironically, Gryffindor found himself up against the sword that he himself had forged, but Harry found that it suited him the best out of the ones available, and the spirit used a standard training one, as Harry could actually be injured and using a real sword was out of the question really.

The pair traded strikes and blocks as well as insults, which Harry was informed was a standard part of any fight like this, for about 20 minutes, far longer than Harry had expected to last.

At that point, Godric stepped up the pace gradually until he was going all out, and to his utter disbelief, his student kept matching him strike for strike…this was unheard of!

Eventually Harry's youth and agility won out over Godric's experience, and he was able to make a quick stabbing motion to where his opponent's heart would be as Gryffindor raised the sword up to deliver what would also have been a strike that could end it.

Bowing to acknowledge defeat, the spirit said "You should be proud of your achievements here, few have ever bested me in a battle of swords, and none that I have ever seen or trained has picked up the art this quickly. I believe we shall have to have a rematch before my time here is over." He decided with a grin, actually being very proud of the young man and the warrior he was becoming. "Now, that's all well and good if you happen to be like me and lug a sword everywhere with you…"

For the next several hours the pair learned the arts of unarmed combat and the basics of fighting with a staff as well as daggers, throwing knives and archery. Each of them performed well in different areas and each decided that when going into dangerous situations they would be carrying weapons beside wands in future. And Tonks personally wished that they had taught at least some of this at the auror academy, as it could have saved lives of several of her friends.

The unarmed combat was particularly interesting for the spirit of the founder to watch, as the pair each used their morphing abilities to the full, making it extremely difficult for the other to gain the advantage, as joints that bend in the opposite direction to what they are supposed to in the blink of an eye make it very difficult to perform any sort of locking technique. They also had a bad habit of forgetting that they were supposed to be _fighting_ while they were wrestling around on the floor…and then becoming embarrassed when Godric instructed them to return to the task at hand.

Eventually though, they had learned enough for one day, and Godric bid them farewell after informing Harry that his lesson the next day would be with Salazar and he would be learning the mind arts, which he was told were Legilimency, occlumency, telepathy and empathy.

Their muscles aching, the young couple decided to try out the bath tub that was in their room, having so far only had showers. It was modelled after the prefect's bath at Hogwarts that Harry had seen in his fourth year…basically a swimming pool with taps full of bubble bath, only this time much more ornate, the bottom and sides being made of or at least covered in gold, the same as the taps which had precious stones in them, all in all, very expensive but _very_ nice.

Two and a half hours later they finally emerged from their shared bath and got dressed, having found interesting uses for a modified bubblehead charm that kept the water out and the air in but allowed solid objects to pass straight through.

Play time being over, Harry decided that he wanted to look through some of the things he had seen in the study previously and not had time to look at, and Tonks decided to go to the library and try to hunt down a good novel, leaving Harry to his boring stuff but still being close enough that they could talk if they wanted or needed to for any reason.

Harry sat behind the large, polished oak, desk in the study and began to go through the drawers.

He found some personal effects, including letters from his mother, that made it obvious that this had been relatively untouched since his father had been here, even though all other personal items from the house had been removed (he had been informed that part of the lock down that the house underwent after being masterless for some time included moving all personal effects that weren't in protected areas into storage in the family vault at Gringotts).

He also found a pair of books that were in a the top drawer by themselves. One was entitled "The Potter Book of Family Spells" and the other "The History of Potter Manor".

Harry decided that these warranted further exploration and set everything else aside to look at them, starting with the history book, which detailed major changes to the house throughout the time it had been standing, including ownership and renovations.

It turned out that until the previous year there had been a house-elf living there, left over from his parents' time, but it had apparently died of old age (the book was very detailed and clearly magically expanded to hold many more pages than its size should allow). However, it turned out that they weren't as alone as they thought as the Potters throughout history had been very tight on security and in some cases somewhat paranoid about trespassers…in fact, some of the entries reminded Harry very strongly of Mad-Eye Moody.

But according to the book, the manor – like the family chamber at the bank – was heavily guarded by magical creatures that would attack any one passing through the gates or over the walls who was not accompanied by a family member.

According to the text, roaming the very expansive grounds were:

A colony of Acromantula that hid in the forest on the grounds. (which Harry was very thankful it was noted would stay hidden at all times unless needed to protect the property.

4 Basilisks , which it was noted should only be attempted to be handled by those in the family who possessed the Parseltongue ability as, though they were loyal to the family, anything other than their native language was considered an insult, and insulting a basilisk was not a good idea. _Hmm…_Harry thought_ looks like talking to snakes isn't that uncommon in my family…good to know I'm not the only one…though I suppose with Slytherin in the family tree I wouldn't be would i?_

There were apparently 12 chimaera scattered around the grounds, which it was said were the descendants of a mating pair that were raised by a member of the family and as such repaid their debt to this day by guarding and protecting the property, as the forests provided ample food supplies and the open areas were their preferred living quarters, making the grounds their ideal habitat.

Dragons: 3 Chinese Fireballs, 5 Hungarian Horntails, 4 Peruvian Vipertoothes, 6 Romanian Longhorns and 8 Ukrainian Ironbellys.

A pair of female Erumpents (note said if replacing either of them to only get females as the males had a habit of blowing each other up in mating season)

A dozen firecrabs in the lake and stream that were on the grounds.

8 graphorns

9 griffins

95 grindylow in the lake

A herd of 25 Hippogriff

10 Kappa in the stream along with 3 kelpie and another 2 in the lake

3 manticores (at this one, Harry laughed remembering the lesson yesterday, and reminding himself to warn Tonks so she didn't provoke one thinking it was him playing around again, as that could be…messy)

As Harry had predicted, there were more Nundu here as well, in this case, 15 of them patrolling the grounds.

5 re'em

30 runespoor

6 sphinx

And finally 12 Tebo

All in all Harry was very impressed with his ancestors' work as it was considered impossible to train most of those animals, never mind get them all to live together without killing each other off…but apparently it had been done, and he had to admit that it did make it highly unlikely that anyone would survive long enough to be able to break into the house or attack if they managed to penetrate the wards in the first place, which were also outlined in the book.

The wards, Harry didn't really understand as he had not done any work with them before so he could only go by the name of them to guess what it did, but even he was impressed.

He also discovered that he had his own professional standard quidditch pitch somewhere in the grounds, which he thought may just need some exploring before too long.

Having seen enough of that for now, Harry set that book aside and looked at the second one.

The "Book of Family Spells" was in fact just that, it contained detailed explanations and instructions for many spells and potions of various types that had been created by members of the family.

He was interested to see that, while most were apparently closely guarded secrets known only to the family and their spouses, he did recognise a few of them as incredibly well known spells.

According to this, the stunning spell, the disillusionment charm, scourgify, the patronus, and many others that he recognised in passing but didn't actually know, had all been developed by members of his family at some stage in history.

This filled him with pride at his family's accomplishments as well as a sense of determination to live up to that legacy.

He had been beginning to wonder if his family had been rich snobs who just sat around living off their accumulated wealth, but the more he learned the more it became apparent that was not the case…the wealth was there because just about every family member in history had made significant contributions to society and had been rewarded for doing so, as well as very good sense when it came to managing the businesses they owned or part owned.

Deciding to learn as many of the spells he could in his free time, Harry returned the book to its previous home in the desk before opening the history book to the last page, which was blank, and picking up an expensive looking quill from the desk began to perform what was clearly a family tradition and added a section saying when he took control of the house and a bit of his first impressions as well as the circumstances of his coming into ownership at this particular point in time.

Once he had completed that task, he realised that he had been reading for several hours, and decided to call it a night.

He exited the study and realised that Tonks had evidently already finished and left him to it, probably seeing that he was highly absorbed in what he was doing.

When he reached the bedroom he confirmed this assumption, seeing that she was already in bed and fast asleep. He slipped out of his clothes and into the bed, crawling up behind her and holding her until he too succumbed to sleep.

Over the next several days, Harry spent the time split between training and exploring the house and grounds and interacting with the many various creatures that he found there.

Tonks usually joined Harry with the training, citing that she needed to keep in practice and was always willing to learn new things. She wasn't even particularly disappointed when she couldn't do half of what Harry was learning, as much of it focussed on either very high power spells or things that were specific to certain abilities that she simply didn't have. She did however draw the line at accompanying him on his visits with the many beasts that existed in the grounds, claiming that _it's just not right, most of them things are man eaters…unlike you I've been brought up my whole life to fear these things and run at the first sign of them…you just _don't_ have a conversation with them!_, which Harry found highly amusing and often teased her good naturedly about.

Harry had also had the opportunity during his lessons to get to know the founders and merlin as actual people as opposed to the myth and legends that surrounded them, and discovered that though all very different, he could get on very well with all of them.

Slytherin had taught Harry much about the various mind arts in their lesson, and since Harry had the latent ability already, unlike many who had to force their minds to work that way, he picked it up easily. Harry found Salazar to be a hard task-master, but at the same time realised that he was only like that because he knew what Harry was capable of and that he needed to achieve high goals in a short time, as such the two came to a fast, unspoken understanding on that matter.

Hufflepuff decided to further the work Harry had already started himself, and their first lesson was a hands on approach to caring and interacting with magical creatures, which considering what they had available was much more interesting than anything even Hagrid could put together (as even though he would probably have tried to get most of these animals at some point, many were actually illegal to own now, but the Potters got around that law since they had already owned them before it came to pass…the restriction was only on the distribution, sale and trading of the creatures). It turned out that Harry had a trait that many in the family had inherited from Helga, they were what was termed "beast masters" which meant that they were able to communicate and control any animal so long as they treated it with respect, which Harry supposed explained how his ancestors had been able to control these animals and get them to live together in the first place. Harry found Hufflepuff to be a kind and considerate person, full of compassion and they easily got along.

Ravenclaw's first lesson with Harry dealt with incredibly complex charms and the ways to combine more than one into a single spell to gain extraordinary results. Harry found this founder to be his idea of what a teacher should be, strict when necessary, but reassuring and supportive at the same time.

Harry's second lesson with Merlin concentrated on the theory and principles of magic itself, something that was severely lacking in the Hogwarts curriculum at present. Merlin explained that magic was a force that flowed through everything in existence from people and animals to objects and the air and even the earth itself, and that spells were merely a way of shaping this energy to bend things to your will. Thinking of it this way made a lot more sense to Harry and things that he had previously not understood properly began to make more sense. He had always been taught (and Tonks confirmed that it seemed to be standard for most people to be taught this way) that the magic was _in_ the spells, that you actually shot bolts of magic at people and things, not that the spells were just a way of connecting you in the correct way to your target and the coloured light you saw was merely a by-product of this joining. This concept of everything being connected and magical people being more in tune with these connections and able to use them to manipulate their surroundings, made a lot of sense to Harry, and the way Merlin explained it, the amount of magic a person possessed within their being, the greater the connections that formed were and that was why the different power levels existed and how absorbing raw magic from his teachers had helped Harry.

Once that lesson was completed, Harry went outside and sat on top of a large grass covered hill and was shortly joined by a male griffin who he had quickly become very fond of and had taken to accompanying him when he was in the grounds since his first explorative trip into them.

Harry was in many ways extremely apprehensive about the following day. Tomorrow was the day that he was to attend the reading of the Last Will and Testament of Sirius Black, and though he already knew more or less what he had received from it, in many ways this would make it final and confirm that Sirius was gone for good. It was also the day of his meeting with this mysterious goblin, Director Ragnok, who wanted to talk to him…though what a bank manager would want to see him about he was unsure, since Griphook had been dealing with everything and Harry couldn't think of anything else that needed doing. And to a lesser extent he was anxious about meeting Tonks' parents, even though she had reassured him that they would be fine with him, there was still a small element of fear and uncertainty…after all, meeting the parents of your girlfriend for the first time is never something to look forward to, Harry reasoned, not that he had had a lot of experience in these matters…but still.

Sensing Harry's emotions, his griffin friend curled up around him protectively and began making crooning noises that Harry found comforting and relaxing, as griffins possessed an ability similar to phoenix song…strengthening and comforting those pure of heart and causing immense pain to those of evil intent.

Several hours later, Tonks went outside to try and find Harry as it was getting late and they had yet to eat. _Bloody figures_ she thought_ Harry could _never_ be satisfied with just owning and controlling some of the most feared animals in existence…no, he has to come out here every day and be FRIENDS with them! Has no one ever told him that you're not supposed to be able to pet a bloody chimeara?! And I saw him the other day with a group of adult unicorns! And I damn well know he's a man!_ She ranted internally as she began searching the places she knew he had taken to spending the most time, all the while hoping that what ever was keeping him company today wasn't too bad.

Twenty minutes later, Harry awoke from his peaceful sleep, when he felt his friend moving to protect him and heard it making noises that were clearly a warning to someone or something.

Harry shifted his body and saw that the someone that was about to be attacked by the griffin was Tonks, who had apparently come to check on him.

Stepping in front of him and placing a hand on his neck, Harry spoke to his self-assumed protector, "It's ok, she's a friend, you can relax."

The griffin looked Harry in the eyes for a moment then its gaze shifted back to Tonks before it gave a distinct nod of it's head and settled back down onto the grass.

"Hi Tonks, sorry about that, are you alright?" asked Harry concernedly.

"Wha? Oh! Yeah, I'm ok. Was just a bit scared…griffins are very much creatures of the light, but when they get protective they can be very fierce." Came her reply. "I was just coming out to see if you were about ready for dinner…it's getting awful late and we've got an early start tomorrow and will probably be busy all day." She explained.

Sighing, Harry said "Yeah, I know. We should probably get something and go to bed early to be ready since Godric has decided that I need to have at least the basics of whatever it is we're doing complete before we go to the bank." He said, dreading whatever the spirit might come up with that early in the morning. "Let me just say goodbye to my friend here and I'll be right with you." He finished, before walking back over to the griffin, who had been watching the exchange between the two, and stroking the soft feathers around his neck.

A few minutes later Harry and Tonks were walking back to the house when Tonks asked, "So, when were you gonna tell me about that one?"

Not quite sure what she was meaning, Harry asked "What do you mean? When was I going to tell you about what?"

Smiling and shaking her head, she replied "I'm gonna guess that griffin has been following you around since you first started coming out here?" at his nod, she continued "and it's obviously very fond and highly protective of you. Now, I'm no expert on magical creatures…in fact I flunked out of that class at school before I'd even got an OWL in it, but I have read a few books and I know full well that it's beginning to bond with you."

Still confused Harry asked, "What do you mean 'bond with me'? It's just friendly, that's all."

"Harry, griffins are naturally very loyal to any witch or wizard who can tame them, but that loyalty only stretches to doing what they're told…the way that one was behaving it's obvious…well, obvious if you know the signs anyway…that it's bonding to you and becoming your familiar…it's the same signs that happen in any animal undergoing the process. I know you are close to Hedwig, but you never actually bonded because her she is incapable of the bond…most snowy owls are. It's really an honour to be chosen to have a familiar, especially a magical creature, and a griffin more than most as it would only bond with someone who is entirely pure of heart and mind…this is amazing, I think it's only been done once before and that isn't even confirmed." She said, before stopping, realizing she was beginning to rant a bit.

Harry went through a range of emotions, at first he was shocked, then confused, then happy and finally content. He supposed he had known that some type of bond was forming between the two of them, but he didn't really know much about the process involved with familiars.

Tonks explained it to him while they prepared and ate a quick meal.

It turned out that the animal had to first choose the witch or wizard and begin the process, it was impossible to force an animal into this sort of bond. The animal that chose you was generally one that felt you exemplified the main characteristics of itself, so to be chosen by something like a griffin or a phoenix was a high compliment, where as should something like a flobberworm or a snail try to bond with you it could be a bit embarrassing.

This was the stage Harry was now at, and he had a choice to make, he could either accept or decline the offer. If he declined, they could remain close but not as close as they had been, and if he accepted then the bond would progress to the final stage, where they would spend a lot of time together strengthening the connection and eventually they would be able to mentally communicate over any distance and call upon each other when needed.

It all seemed a bit far fetched to Harry, but he had seen a few witches and wizards, both at school and elsewhere, that had familiars and it seemed like a highly beneficial thing.

He decided to think about it properly and make his decision within the next few days.

Until then, thoughts about animals and plans for the following day could wait, as there was a beautiful young woman who was currently dragging him in the direction of the bedroom, and he didn't think that she planned on either of them sleeping for quite some time.


	14. Wills and Crimes

**Chapter 13: Wills and Crimes**

Harry and Tonks were up and dressed by 4:30 the following morning, as Harry needed to complete his daily training in time to get showered and changed ready for the will reading, and was of the opinion that if he had to suffer then so did she…much to the young witch's disgust.

Entering the training room, they found that Godric had already arrived. Understanding that they needed to be as quick as possible while still completing as much work as they were able, the spirit began straight away, bypassing the pleasantries.

"Today we are going to work on something that you should already know a fair amount about…defensive magic. That is to say; shields – both solid and those made of energy, deflecting spells, counter curses and diversionary tactics. Remember, these are all well and good if you need them, but as I told you in our work with the swords, the best defence against any form of attack is to simply not be there when it hits.

"However, often that is not an option, so there are a whole range of spells to learn. Why don't we begin by you each demonstrating those you know already?"

And so they did, and for the next 3 and a half hours, Godric instructed them both in the proper use of those and many spells that were new to them both. Tonks admitted that she had learned more in this field of study in the previous few hours than in 3 years at the auror academy, at which point Gryffindor merely smiled smugly at the pair.

They each went and got ready and before long both were fully dressed and waiting for the time to go, each lost in thoughts of Sirius and hoping that there would not be any trouble today.

When they arrived in Diagon Alley, they made quite a sight. Him in a robe that he had found that was to be worn by the Potter patriarch at any formal occasion, a deep black in colour and made of a remarkably soft material that Harry couldn't identify, with the Potter family crest displayed proudly above his heart. Add to that the beautiful young woman currently on his arm who was dressed in Auror formal dress robes, and they drew the attention of practically everyone as they strode calmly and confidently down the middle of the street towards the imposing white structure that was Gringotts.

They entered through the main doors and were immediately shown to a waiting room where the others who were attending the reading were already in attendance.

Harry was somewhat angry because of some of the people present.

There was Albus Dumbledore, Remus Lupin, Alastor Moody, Professor McGonagall, Cornelius Fudge, Percy Weasley, Narcissa and Draco Malfoy, a woman Harry recognised but couldn't remember the name of until Tonks informed him it was Amelia Bones from the DMLE, and entering just moments after them from another door were two people who judging from the fact that Tonks walked straight over to them must be her parents. There were also several members of the press dotted around the room who had thankfully yet to notice his presence.

Deciding it was now or never, Harry followed in Tonks' footsteps and approached the family reunion.

Upon seeing him, Tonks quickly wrapped an arm around his waist to try and boost his confidence a bit.

"And who might this be?" Her father asked, looking Harry up and down.

"Oh, right…introductions…sorry." Began Tonks, momentarily off balance and forgetting herself, "Mum, dad, this is Harry – my new boyfriend. Harry, this is my mum and dad, Andromeda and Ted Tonks."

"Pleased to meet you sir, ma'am" said Harry nervously, offering his hand to her father who tried to grind his fingers to dust (until Harry returned the favour, much more effectively at least) and her mother who smiled and shook it politely.

"Nymphadora, you do realise that it isn't common practice to bring a date to the reading of a Will, don't you?" asked Andromeda.

Tonks, having cringed at the use of her given name was beginning to reply when the door through to the room where everything was to take place opened and a goblin walked out.

"The reading of the Last Will and Testament of Mr. Sirius Orion Black will commence shortly. Before we begin, would Lord Potter please accompany me to discuss some other business please? Thank you."

Recognising an out when he saw one, Harry quickly bid the Tonks goodbye and agreed that they could talk afterwards before hurriedly following the goblin.

Harry was shown to a seat next to another, ancient looking, goblin who was seated at the head of the table looking over some paperwork.

"Greetings, Lord Potter. I am Director Ragnok; I thank you for agreeing to meet with me after today's business has been dealt with. I will be personally dealing with the reading of the will also, so I thought we could speak briefly before beginning.

"One of the main things I wanted to remind you of at this point is that as primary beneficiary, you may object to the presence of anyone who is neither named specifically in the will nor family of the deceased.

"Also, I believe these rings belong to you, my Lord." The goblin continued, passing Harry a tray containing what were obviously the family rings Griphook had promised to get to him at some point that day.

"Thank you Director, and please, can we drop the whole "my lord" thing? Just call me Harry, I don't like formality that much." Harry replied with a small smile.

Momentarily startled as it was unheard of for a human to allow a goblin to address them as an equal, Ragnok recovered and replied "Very well, Harry. In which case I must insist you also simply call me Ragnok. I can sympathise with your dislike of some of the formality and prestige, but some families insist upon it, so at the bank it is policy to use titles so as not to offend anyone."

Harry merely nodded, at which point Ragnok signalled for the other guests to be allowed in.

Within a couple of minutes, everyone was seated. Harry was pleased to note that Tonks was by his side, but unhappy to see that directly across from the two of them were Dumbledore and Fudge, who Harry didn't think were particularly interested in the will, but more in him.

"Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you all for joining us today. I am Director Ragnok of Gringotts and I will be overseeing the reading of this, the Last Will and Testament of Sirius Orion Black.

"As a matter of protocol I must insist that, though notes can be taken, all recording devices with the exception of the official records quill must be deactivated.

"Additionally at this point, I must ask the primary beneficiary of this Will if he has any objections to the presence of any parties during the reading." He continued, and in a slightly quieter voice said "Harry, do you have reason to oppose any individual's presence here today?"

Those that heard immediately gained shocked expressions at the familiar way the Director addressed the young man.

Thinking carefully, Harry replied, "The rules are that I can object to any person who isn't family or a beneficiary, right?" At the goblin's nod of confirmation Harry continued, "Very well. All press out; this is a will reading, not a media circus. Minister Fudge can also find his way to the door as I think he made Sirius suffer enough that he isn't welcome here.

"The same can be said for Dumbledore unless he's receiving something. Percy Weasley is also unwelcome.

"And unfortunately the only other objections I have are to family members, so I will have to hold my peace there."

Nodding in agreement, Ragnok looked around the room and said, "none of the indicated parties are in receipt of anything from this will so would you all please vacate the room in an orderly fashion?"

Grumbling, the reporters who had been gathered at the far end of the table left. After a few moments, Percy Weasley followed suit, complaining about arrogant children.

Speaking again, Ragnok said "Minister Fudge and Headmaster Dumbledore, you have been asked to leave. In accordance with custom and protocol, I must insist that you exit the room immediately."

Fudge was the first to respond, "This is absurd, you cannot kick me out!"

Dumbledore soon followed saying "I will be remaining as I have invested interest in the content of this will."

Getting highly annoyed Harry stepped in. "You have been asked nicely, I strongly suggest you comply." When neither moved a muscle, Harry addressed Ragnok. "Ragnok, would it be a breach of any protocols if I were to forcibly remove them from the room?"

Harry was extremely happy when it was indicated that he could proceed if he wanted, and cast a spell he had read about in his family's spell book…it used a process similar to apparition to move the target to a location anywhere in the world of the caster's choice.

The pair vanished with a small popping sound.

Everyone was stunned for a moment before Director Bones spoke up, "Mr. Potter, I am going to have to insist on knowing where you sent them…or at least if I am going to have to arrest you for doing it." Her words were stern, but everyone could tell she was actually rather amused at the situation.

"Don't worry Madam Bones, they're in a broom cupboard at the leaky cauldron." Stated Harry with a chuckle, which was echoed by most people in the room.

"Very well. Now that is dealt with to everyone's satisfaction, we can proceed with the reading of the will." Stated Ragnok.

He unfolded a sheet of parchment and began to read from it.

"I, Sirius Orion Black, being sound of body and mind do hereby declare this to be my Last Will and Testament, voiding all others previously written before this day, 12th April 1996.

"Ok, so dividing up all my stuff and the junk and cash left over from my family…well, here goes.

"To Remus Lupin, my dear friend and true marauder, I leave the sum of 2 million galleons and the following advice. Don't be afraid to live Moony, enjoy yourself and have a family if you find the right witch, believe it or not someone could actually like you in spite of your furry little problem and could deal with it and make you a very happy bloke. And for Merlin's sake, use some of the money to get yourself some new clothes! I'll miss you Moony, have a good life.

"To Andromeda Tonks, my dear cousin and one of the only people in the family worth knowing, I leave the sum of 2.5 million galleons…consider this repayment of the loan you gave me plus a bit extra. Sorry I couldn't know you better in the past years but I hope you've been very happy.

"To her husband, Theodore Tonks, I leave the sum of 500, 000 galleons. I wish I could have gotten to know you; you must be a great guy to capture my favourite cousin's heart. Look after her.

"To their daughter, and my good friend as well as cousin, Nymphadora Tonks…HA! Can't whack me this time. I leave you 3 million of your very own galleons and my motorbike that you always wanted to have a go on, well it's yours now! Enjoy! I also leave you a bit of advice, have a good life and find a decent wizard to settle down with sometime and have a family…I have one in mind that I think will be interested, but I'm not gonna play matchmaker, it'll either happen or it won't. Have a good life Nymphie.

"To my paranoid friend, Mad-Eye I leave 100, 000 galleons and these words. "Look out, he's behind you!" Jokes aside, I hope you enjoy the rest of your life Moody, and I thank you for keeping an old dog company all those times. Oh, and you also get 4 cases of firewhisky from the basement at you-know-where.

"I leave my cousins Bellatrix and Narcissa, as well as her son Draco, absolutely nothing at this time, with one exception. Narcissa, if you should ever decide to leave your husband, know that I have set up an account in your name containing 2 million galleons…leave him Cissy, he's a prick and will only cause you problems.

"I leave the remainder of my possessions and the Black estate, including properties, businesses, items, titles and money to my godson, Harry James Potter. Harry, please forgive this old mutt for leaving you so soon. I wish I could have gotten to know you better, but know that the time I spent with you was the happiest I've been for a very long time. Don't grieve me too much, with the exception of the few times we've spent time together and a few others, I've been miserable these past years…I escaped Azkaban only to end up a prisoner of a different sort. I have left you some letters and notes that I want you to read in private, they will tell you things that you should know but I have been unable and not allowed to tell you about until now. I also give you the advice to kick snake-face's scaly arse straight to hell and to find a good witch to make you happy, have a family and live life to the full. I'm proud of you kiddo, look after yourself. Also, I have completed the paperwork to have you emancipated upon my death…but that should have already happened so you shouldn't need telling about that.

"Ok, well I think that is about all. Take care everyone. I hope you enjoy my stuff, have fun while you can. This is Padfoot saying good bye for the final time."

After a moment's pause in which the majority of the people present wore sad smiles, with the exception of the Malfoys, one who had a look of grim resignation and the other a look of outrage…no prizes for guessing which was which, Ragnok spoke again.

"The appropriate funds have been transferred to your respective vaults, and the primary beneficiary has received the vault keys for his inheritance as well as the deeds to the houses. In the case of Miss Tonks, the motorcycle mentioned in the will is ready to be collected at your convenience.

"That said, I will now entertain any challenges to the Will." He concluded, already suspecting some of what was to come.

"I object!" Draco Malfoy practically shouted, to no one's surprise. "I am the closest living male of Black bloodline, I insist on being given my due inheritance. That dog can't make a half-blood who isn't even part of the family his main beneficiary, this is an outrage!"

Speaking calmly, Ragnok replied, "Mr. Malfoy, you will hold your temper. Mr. Black was the last of his line; therefore he was entitled to do what he saw fit with the residue of the Black family estate. You would have had a claim if Mr. Black had not specifically stated you were to be given nothing, as it stands now, you do not." He finished, barely restraining a grin.

"This is not an objection, however I have been asked to raise a question if I may?" Spoke Remus Lupin. Ragnok nodded, acknowledging him, "I speak on behalf of the Weasley family as well as the organisation known as the Order of the Phoenix. Both parties wish to know why they have not been bequeathed anything in the Will, if it is known." He finished.

"There are no mentions in the documentation I have referring to either party; therefore I cannot provide an explanation. Is there any reason why they expected to be included?" asked Ragnok.

"The Weasleys feel that Sirius owed them something, and the Order of the Phoenix was something that he felt strongly about, and therefore it was anticipated would have left at least something." Replied Remus.

"May I speak?" asked Harry. Then addressing Lupin, continued, "I think you will find that by the end, he was a bit disillusioned as far as the order was concerned, and as for the Weasleys, he barely tolerated them. Moony, as you know, any additional bequests are at my discretion. Can you think of any reason why I would give them anything?" he asked. When he saw the older man had nothing, he thought for a minute before continuing, "Ragnok, I hereby grant an additional inheritance. 30 silver sickles are to be delivered to the order of the phoenix for them to share, with the message that they will get the rest of what they deserve in good time." He finished with an evil glint in his eye and a feeling of power emanating from his body.

Ragnok, understanding the reference in exactly what was being given asked no questions at this time and merely made a note of it, before saying "It will be done."

"Are there any more challenges?" he asked, looking around the room.

Surprisingly, Narcissa spoke up, "This is also not a challenge, but a query. What precisely are the terms attached to the account left in my name?" she asked, showing no signs of the anger most had expected from her.

Consulting his notes, Ragnok replied, "If and when you divorce Lucius Malfoy and renounce the Malfoy name permanently, returning to your position as a Black, and make a vow not to support or assist in any way the forces of evil, you will receive your inheritance as well as be allowed to live in a Black property, at the discretion of Lord Black." He finished with a gesture to Harry.

Narcissa thought about this for a moment, and seemed to be seriously considering it. "I will…think about the offer made by my cousin." She said, over the objections of her son. In that moment, Harry thought that there was a possibility he had misjudged her.

"Any other business?" asked the ancient goblin.

This time, Amelia Bones stood up. "I am here as an official representative of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, as well as a friend of Sirius' from before he was imprisoned. I would first like to say that I have always believed him innocent; however whenever I tried to investigate the matter, my progress was blocked by the powers that be.

"However, given his death, I have been able to prove his innocence to the satisfaction of the law. As such, though over the objections of my superiors, I have been able to grant Sirius Black, posthumously, a full pardon for all crimes he was accused of. I know it is too little too late, however it was the least I could do." She said the last looking directly at Harry, and he gained a whole new respect for the woman.

No one else chose to speak, so Ragnok ended the reading. He then informed Harry that he understood the young man would want to speak to other people for a short while, and said that he would be waiting for when he was done so they could have their own meeting.

Harry turned to see who was still there when he was immediately intercepted by Bones.

"Hello, Mr. Potter. I'm deeply sorry for your loss, you have my condolences, he was a good man." She began. "I want you to know, that although it will be in the Prophet, I didn't get him cleared for the publicity, I have no interest in that…I did it because it was the right thing to do. I was wondering, would it be possible to arrange a brief meeting with you at some point in the near future? There are some things I would like to discuss with you."

Harry thought for a moment. She didn't seem like a typical politician, who was only out for publicity and to try and look good. And she had supported him last year at that farce of a trial at the ministry. He supposed it couldn't hurt to hear her out.

"Ok," he said, "when and where?"

"How does the day after tomorrow in my office sound? I'm free all day, so just come when you get chance. If you're uncomfortable coming alone then you can bring someone along to reassure you, or we can arrange another venue of your choosing." She replied.

Seeing that she really wasn't interested in cornering him, Harry relaxed and replied "I'll be there. Though I probably will bring someone with me anyway. See you then." He finished before walking off and over towards Tonks and her parents.

"Hi Harry." Tonks said when she saw him approach. "You ok? I saw you talking to Director Bones, is everything alright?" she asked, concerned.

Smiling weakly at her, he replied, "Yeah, I'm ok. She just wanted to set up a meeting for something or other. I've to go the day after tomorrow whenever I get chance." After a brief pause he continued, "I just thought I would come over and say hi…I've only got a few minutes until I'll have to go talk with Ragnok."

"Oh, yeah I forgot about that."

"Excuse me, Mr. Potter." Andromeda Tonks cut in. "It seems you are awfully busy, but would it be possible to talk to you about something, at your earliest convenience?" she asked. Seeing his discomfort, she smiled and continued "Don't worry, I have been talking with my daughter and am very happy for the two of you, I'm not going to corner you and bite your head off about dating her. No, it's something that I've wanted to do for quite a while but there was no one in a position to help…you see, I don't know if you realise it or not, but I was born Andromeda Black, and was thrown out of the family…that has made life fairly difficult for me as if someone has been shunned by their family they are considered disgraced in the wizarding world…I wanted to talk to you about the possibility of my rejoining the family…if you would consider it?" she finished hopefully.

Realization dawning on Harry's face as he realised exactly what she wanted, he replied "yes, of course we can talk about it…Sirius told me why you were kicked out when he showed me the Black family tree, and I think it's ridiculous. Umm…I have to go now, but I'm sure your wonderful daughter can arrange some time for us to talk." He said with a smile, receiving a poke in the side from his girlfriend for his efforts. "I'm sorry to have to run, but keeping a goblin waiting too long doesn't strike me as a good idea if you value your limbs."

They exchanged goodbyes and Harry walked back over to where Ragnok was still sitting, waiting patiently.

"Are you ready now, Harry?" he asked.

"Yeah, are we talking here? Or going somewhere else?" responded the teen.

"I believe my office would be best, as it is secure from eavesdroppers, and some of what I want to discuss is of a sensitive nature." The goblin replied with a frightening smile, before grabbing his paperwork and walking from the room with surprising speed and grace for one seemingly so old.

Harry followed along in his wake, passing through a labyrinth of tunnels and corridors before reaching a highly ornate and decorative set of doors, seemingly made of solid gold, which were flanked by heavily armed goblin warriors who snapped to attention as their boss approached, and the doors opened automatically, granting the old goblin and young wizard entry.

Harry looked around the office he was in and was impressed. It was large and had a big, solid wooden desk, an ornate fireplace, several weapons and other such items mounted on the wall, and a more informal seating area, with two chairs and a sofa, which is where Ragnok lead Harry and they each took one of the chairs, facing each other.

"Now, there are a couple of matters I want to talk to you about…and neither are entirely pleasant. The first is to do with your accounts and the second is regarding the war we currently find ourselves in." began the old goblin, cutting right to the heart of the matter…goblins never being much for small talk.

Harry's interest in the conversation immediately increased and he indicated for him to continue.

"Account Manager Griphook and I have been investigating your accounts and we have found many discrepancies that would probably have gone unnoticed, had the fact that you were not aware of any of your holdings caused us to investigate the cause of this oversight.

"It would seem that for the years since your parents' deaths there have been a number of transactions leaving your accounts and being routed to the vaults of others.

"Now, transferring money from vault to vault happens literally hundreds of thousands of times per day in this branch alone, so ordinarily we would not have found it suspicious…were it not for us finding the letter that authorised someone to act upon your behalf."

At this, the goblin handed a piece of parchment across to Harry.

When the young man read it, he was shocked. It was a letter authorising one Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore to have control of the Potter funds and was quite clearly signed Harry James Potter.

The only problem with this was that Harry had never written such a letter, and it would have been quite difficult for him to, since it was written 2 days after his parents' died, making him all of 15 months old at the time and quite unable to say the majority of the words in the letter, much less write them in clear concise sentences with perfect handwriting.

"Naturally, when we saw this, we knew the cause of the problem. It would have gone through as a fully legal document at the time, as the name on the account matched the one on the letter, and those files don't contain the age of the account holder…only later when Griphook and myself came to review them did we find the discrepancy…I assume you never wrote such a document?" The goblin asked.

"No, I've never seen this before in my life…and this is clearly Dumbledore's writing…I'd recognise it anywhere…" replied Harry. "Just how much has the old bastard robbed me of over the years?" he asked viciously.

Understanding the young man's anger, and checking some more papers before answering, Ragnok replied "Since this letter of _authorisation_ was put into effect, a total of 125, 148, 950 galleons have been transferred from your vault to others within the bank.

"I have taken the liberty of doing some digging around and found out exactly where the money ended up…these are the figures." He finished, handing Harry another piece of parchment, with names and numbers on it, showing who had stolen what from him.

Weasley family: 3, 586, 009

Molly Weasley: 2, 000, 481

Ronald Weasley: 1, 492, 635

Ginevra Weasley: 1, 005, 729

Severus Snape: 2, 496, 290

Albus Dumbledore: 60, 951, 853

Order of the Phoenix: 20, 592, 902

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry – c/o Headmaster: 20, 986, 362

Cornelius Fudge: 12, 036, 689

Harry was now absolutely furious. "Are you certain these figures are right?" he managed to grind out.

"We take pride in our work Harry, I would not give information to a client unless I was absolutely sure it was correct in its entirety." Came the solemn reply.

Harry's first thought was to go and kill everyone on the list. He then rationalised that although he could break out pretty easily, Azkaban wasn't his favourite idea of a summer holiday spot, so he would have to do everything legally…leading him to his next question.

"When I report this, will you be willing to testify that this happened and how it happened?"

Only hesitating a moment, Ragnok replied, "I will. This is despicable and I believe they should be made an example of. I will testify at the ministry and in front of the Wizengamot if necessary. I only wish they were under my authority…if a goblin did something like this, I would rip his head from his body with my bare hands and mount it on my wall." And Harry had no doubt as to the sincerity of that statement. "Since that was not an option, I have, as of this morning, frozen all of the accounts listed…no money in or out until I personally say otherwise. I have also done the same to all other accounts in the name of Albus Dumbledore, and several others that we know are his under an alias."

Calming slightly, Harry said, "Thank you Ragnok. I appreciate your help with this…anyway, unless there is anything else on that matter, I believe there was something else you wanted to talk about?" he asked, hoping for a change of topic.

Sensing this, Ragnok smiled and said, "Yes, there is. The wizarding world is at war. Ordinarily, we goblins try to stay out of human wars as much as possible. However, in this case, the outcome will directly affect us.

"As you have probably realised, goblin society is centred around Gringotts. As such we, as a people, prefer what is most profitable. Now, if the side of the light wins, then the ministry of magic will remain in control and although they are not always easy to live with, we will be allowed to survive and continue to run the bank.

"However, should the forces of Voldemort win, things would be very different.

"Voldemort has recently sent certain…representatives, to try and sway me in favour of his side…he gives promises of power and freedom for my people…but I know them to be lies. He does not share power, and considers anything other than full blooded wizards to be vermin to exterminate, therefore he would stay allied with us until he won and then turn on us.

"Needless to say, we prefer the first option. As such, for the first time in several hundred years, we are willing to sacrifice our neutrality in this conflict. We goblins have our sources of very reliable information and we know, as you do, that if any one is to end this then it shall be you. As such, I am making an offer to ally my forces with you in battle. Not the ministry, definitely not Dumbledore, you." Finished the goblin, sitting back to see how the young human reacted.

At first, Harry didn't know what to say. I mean, goblins were legendary warriors. To have them fighting by your side would be very helpful…but then exactly how much man power did a bank manager control in the long run? A commitment from Ragnok, while more than welcome, could be practically meaningless, as a couple of warriors and a bunch of bank workers did not a powerful fighting force make.

Deciding on a careful reply, Harry spoke. "Thank you for your offer, Ragnok. I accept gratefully, and know that I will do everything I am able to, to try and help your people lead easier lives and overcome the prejudices I know you suffer. But, and forgive me here, you run a bank…exactly what sort of force do you command?" he finished curiously.

Ragnok in fact took no offence at this, and seemed to find it quite humorous. He also understood just what Griphook had meant when he explained that this young man knew little to nothing of the way the magical world works.

Smiling widely, he replied, "I see they really don't teach you about us at that school of yours. You are right; I am, as you pointed out the manager of this bank. However, as I mentioned earlier, our society is established around the bank, therefore the director of a Gringotts branch is the leader of all the goblins in that area, and as this is the worldwide headquarters of Gringotts…that makes me the leader of all goblins the world over. Does that answer your question about exactly how much influence I have and what sort of force I would be able to rally behind you?" He finished.

Now Harry was highly embarrassed, "I'm sorry Ragnok, you're right, I didn't realise that's how your society worked. And I still mean what I said, I welcome any help you can provide, and will do what I can to help your people out whenever I can."

Ragnok was impressed with the sincerity of the young wizard. It was rare to see one of his kind who could look passed the prejudices common in magical society, and the fact that this particular human was soon to be one of the most influential in the country, if not the world, made him all the rarer.

The two exchanged a few more words, Ragnok promising to be in touch soon, before Harry left the office and was escorted back to the main foyer by one of the security guards that was outside the door.

Once outside again, Harry decided that he wanted to deal with this new information about the exact nature of the theft from his vaults as soon as he could. That meant a trip to the ministry.

Not knowing where that was physically located, and thinking that illegally apparating into the ministry of magic was probably asking for trouble, Harry realised that as much as he hated it, he would have to travel by floo.

So he walked to the Leaky Cauldron and threw a couple of coins onto the bar to cover the use of the floo powder and, stepping into the now green fire, called out his destination.

His arrival was smooth for once. Well, by Harry's standards at least. He only stumbled and didn't actually fall. Nothing was broken. And he could now use magic so a quick wandless cleaning charm later and he was good as new.

The atrium of the Ministry building was, as usual, packed with people. Harry however had to work hard to suppress memories of his previous visits here…both while on trial and while fighting Voldemort and his death eaters.

Making his way into the lift, Harry went down to the floor that was the home to the DMLE.

Harry wasn't exactly sure who he was supposed to talk to about something like this. It wasn't exactly something that needed an auror, as they dealt with fighting dark wizards. But exactly who was it that dealt with this sort of thing? Why couldn't they have a "Some Bastard Stole My Money" department? That would make it so much easier.

Harry had been standing there a couple of minutes trying to work out where to go from there, when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

"Wotcher, loverboy. Miss me already?" Said the grinning face of Tonks, who Harry just now remembered was going to be doing a bit of work while he was busy again, even though she was on leave.

Harry quickly and briefly explained the situation. Tonks was appalled, and informed him that usually that sort of thing would be handled by a desk clerk who was notoriously unhelpful.

Getting frustrated, Harry looked around again and saw what was possibly his solution.

His decision made, Harry began walking, Tonks seeing where he was going decided it was as good a bet as anything and followed, wanting to keep him out of trouble, as strictly speaking he shouldn't really be in this section.

Harry walked into a reception area, with a young secretary sitting behind a desk, who looked up and asked with a bored expression, "Can I help you?"

"Yes. Would it be possible to speak to Director Bones anytime soon please?" responded Harry.

"I'll see if she's available but I doubt it. Who should I say wants to see her? Mr…"

"Potter. Tell her that Harry Potter would like to speak to her as soon as possible" he replied, doing his best to ignore the familiar open mouthed gaping at the scar on his forehead, as the witch merely nodded stupidly before practically running to her boss' office.

"That was mean Harry." Said Tonks teasingly, "You coulda given her a heart attack."

He didn't get time to reply because at that moment the secretary returned saying, "The director will see you now, sir." In what she thought was a seductive voice but actually repulsed Harry somewhat, though it was enough to make Tonks glare at her and growl threateningly as they passed.

Entering the office, Harry saw it was as he had expected, large, plain and practical, with very little personalisation, though it was not unwelcoming or sterile by any means.

As they entered, Bones rose from behind her desk, "Mr. Potter, this is most unexpected, I didn't expect to see you for a couple of days yet. To what do I owe this pleasure?" she asked, shaking his hand.

"I'm afraid to say, it's nothing good director. I've just had a meeting at Gringotts straight after the Will reading and I learned some rather interesting things.

"It turns out that for years someone has been stealing money from my family's vault there. I was hoping you would be able to help me with bringing charges against them?" Harry replied hopefully.

Sitting back behind her desk, Bones gestured Harry to one of the other chairs before speaking.

"I may be able to do that. And what is your interest in this matter Auror Tonks?"

"I know Harry personally and want to help out in any way I can, but lets say that my interest is more in him than the money, director." She replied, hoping her boss would get the message and not pry further.

"Very well, take a seat. Mr. Potter, if indeed a crime has been committed then rest assured I will see to it that the parties responsible will be punished to the full force of the law. However, as I am sure Auror Tonks has informed you, it is usual for such complaints to go through the fraud clerk who is located in the main office…is there a reason why you are bringing this to my personal attention?" she asked, wanting to make sure that he didn't expect any preferential treatment just because he was famous.

"Yes. Because of the amounts of money we are talking about and the people involved, I thought it would be best if this were handled carefully." Replied Harry.

"Can you be more specific please? I will need details." Bones replied, growing impatient.

Realising that the direct approach would be best Harry cut to the main point. "Albus Dumbledore has stolen over 125 million galleons from me for himself and other people since my parents' death."

Whatever Amelia Bones had been expecting when she was told Harry Potter wanted to see her, it most certainly wasn't this. She was now very glad that this had been brought directly to her, as if the wrong people learned about this too quickly then it would be over before it began. This was an opportunity she had been waiting for years to come along. She knew that Dumbledore had been manipulating people and playing little games for years, she even suspected that he had been breaking a fair few laws along the way, but she could never prove anything…but this, this could be enough to ruin the man. But she was getting ahead of herself…

"You can prove this?" she asked, somewhat eagerly.

"Yes ma'am. I have official documents from Gringotts with the specific facts, figures and dates of transfers on them. Also Ragnok has agreed to personally testify to these facts should it be needed." He replied confidently.

This was a dream come true for Bones if it checked out. No one would refute a claim by Harry Potter, supported by the head of the entire goblin nation! Even if it was against Dumbledore!

"May I see those documents please?" she asked carefully.

Harry handed the paperwork over to her and for the next twenty minutes she read through every last detail with an expert eye.

She gradually became more and more appalled at the nature of this crime. Harry had only mentioned the monetary aspect of it, but these papers contained proof of a whole host of other crimes that he had already worked out over the past weeks.

Finally, she looked up and spoke to Harry. "Mr. Potter, you have an extremely strong case here. I can bring a series of serious charges against Dumbledore and if we can prove that they were knowingly receiving stolen money, the other people here as well. Also, looking at the funds transferred to our illustrious minister…a fair few of these dates stand out in my mind as times when important trials were being held or legislation being decided…it may very well be that the dear headmaster has been bribing him…I will have to investigate that aspect further.

"As of now, I can bring the following against Dumbledore; theft, misappropriation of funds, circumventing a parent's wishes for their child, custodial interference, misuse of power, abuse of power, transferring stolen property, withholding knowledge of status and fraud. Is there anything else I should know about before starting the paperwork?" she asked, not entirely sure she wanted to know.

Harry looked thoughtful, but before he had chance, Tonks spoke up.

"Yes Director. You can add the following; neglect, child abuse, illegally binding a person's magic, kidnapping, endangerment, mental assault, conspiracy to commit mental assault, aiding an enemy of the state and illegal imprisonment." She replied in an official tone of voice.

Bones looked startled…some of those were very serious charges. "Can you prove all of those Auror? And I would like an explanation of how they pertain to Mr. Potter, if you please."

Harry on the other instantly understood where Tonks was going with these…he hadn't even consciously thought about most of them as criminal acts before…but really, if he was going after Dumbles, he might as well go all out while he had chance.

For the next several minutes Harry and Tonks explained about the way the Dursleys had treated Harry and that Dumbledore had known all along and kept sending him back there. That covered neglect and child abuse, especially when some of the details of Harry's school adventures came to light. Binding of his magic was covered when the blocks that Tonks had removed were detailed. It turned out that using legilimency without the permission of the other person was illegal except in certain circumstances, and was considered 'mental assault'…he had ordered Snape to do the same, hence the conspiracy charge (which Tonks would testify he had done during order meetings). Kidnapping was the having him taken from his parents' house after Voldemort attacked and not given to his rightful guardian (which was apparently what Hagrid had been told was going to happen, so the friendly giant was not going to get into trouble for it) as well as removing Harry from the guardians that Dumbledore himself had appointed without notifying them and getting their permission.

The illegal imprisonment was that he had been confined to privet drive or Grimauld place and not allowed to even walk out the door fairly often and the order, on Dumbledore's orders had forced him to remain. As for the assisting an enemy of the state, Tonks cited the fact that through Dumbledore's actions and inactions Voldie had gained a significant advantage many times…the graveyard for instance should not have been allowed to occur, and the department of mysteries disaster would have been easily preventable by him. It was a bit of a shaky interpretation of the law, but it might stick so they decided to try it.

Bones told the pair that she would begin the process and that she would keep them informed, they would both have to testify when this all reached trial and that because of the nature of the charges and who Dumbledore was, it would be a trial in front of the entire Wizengamot with the exception of Dumbledore himself, not just the judicial body. It surprised Harry to learn that he himself would be allowed to exercise all of his votes in this matter…he thought he would have been disqualified as he was the person pressing the charges, but apparently that's not the way things worked in the wizarding world…but he wasn't going to complain too loudly about it.

Bones also informed Harry that the next general Wizengamot meeting was three days from now. Something that somebody had conveniently forgotten to let him know about…which struck Harry as a little too convenient considering if he didn't attend when his application was brought before the council then his seats were considered forfeit for his lifetime…he wondered exactly how much involvement his favourite headmaster had had in that little administrative error.

Harry agreed to return to see Bones later in the week for their planned meeting as there were still things that she wanted to discuss with him that were not connected to this matter, and they both needed a break after dealing with all of this.

Harry and Tonks left the office, feeling considerably better than when they entered, knowing that Dumbledore would finally get his due at least in part.

They returned to Potter Manor shortly thereafter, once Tonks had spent a few minutes finishing off the report she had been writing when she had spotted Harry earlier.

For the rest of the day, the pair relaxed and spent a bit of time practicing in the training room and the rest of it just sitting and spending time with each other and getting to know one another even better as they had had relatively little time for that recently.

Tonks informed Harry that she had arranged that little meet up he had wanted with her parents for the following afternoon. They decided that Tonks would go and meet them and then bring them back to the Manor, as her father had expressed interest in seeing exactly where they were staying.

That night, Harry and Tonks relaxed once more in a bath for several hours (thanks to a permanent warming charm on the bath that kept the water comfortable), enjoying each other's company and sampling the delights that sharing a swimming pool sized tub with your naked partner could bring, before drying off and collapsing into bed in each other's arms.

All in all, it hadn't been a bad day for the pair. They had learned some very useful spells from Godric, dealt with Sirius' will that had been hanging over their heads, Harry had made an ally with one of the most powerful forces in the world as well as the beginnings of a friendship with its leader, they had begun to give Dumbledore everything he deserved, set up several meetings that would be of great benefit to them and after all that, still had plenty of time to themselves to enjoy the other's company…no, not a bad day at all, they each thought.


	15. A Variety of Bonds

**Chapter 14: A Variety of Bonds**

The next day began as normal; the young couple woke up and soon were ready to begin the day, as always, starting with training with one of the spirits, in this case Salazar.

When they entered the training room, the founder was already waiting. And the look on his face told them that they were going to learn a lot this morning, but they were not going to enjoy one minute of it.

"Good morning, how nice of you to join me." He began with an evil smile. "Today I am going to teach you both offensive magics to the best of my ability. This will include many things that modern witches and wizards seem to think are impossible." He then directly addressed Tonks, "Many of these spells will be far beyond your ability. Do not take offence, it is merely a fact." He stated plainly. "Now, I want to see you duel each other to the best of your abilities so I can see where you stand already."

For about ten minutes, Harry and Tonks did just that, though Tonks ended up spending most of the time jumping away from Harry's spells and very little casting her own, as she discovered early on that he was more than powerful enough for his spells to rip through her shields without losing much of their force.

Eventually Harry landed a very advanced form of stunning spell that he had found the previous year while researching for the DA. It instantly knocked her out, and threw her backwards with a great deal of force, that would have made her little more than a smear on the wall had he not used a quick wandless spell to stop her movement and lower her to the floor before reviving her.

Needless to say, Tonks was somewhat embarrassed, there she was, fully trained Auror, beaten and covered in sweat from her efforts, while him, who shouldn't even be out of school yet was still standing and hadn't seemed to make much of an effort. But she wasn't angry, just humiliated.

"I see." Said Slytherin, "It seems as though although you each know different sets of spells you both have a similar range, which is fairly impressive, and it is simply power levels and luck that decide who is victorious…very well, we shall begin with…"

And so it was for the next several hours. Between the three of them they increased Harry and Tonks' array of offensive spells as well as their speed and accuracy while casting them. It seemed as though Salazar was knowledgeable beyond practically everyone currently alive on this subject and as such was a vast well of information, he was also an outstanding teacher which helped greatly.

Eventually though, Tonks reached a point where she could not really progress further except through practice over vast amounts of time. At this point, she basically assumed the role of target dummy for Harry to practice the more advanced and more powerful spells that Slytherin came up with…at which point she decided that Harry was definitely going to owe her for this one.

Salazar also taught Harry a useful little trick for use in fights. Casting a shield spell wandlessly, so that your wand hand was always free to attack without you having to worry too much about getting hit…that was something the teen fully intended to practice to perfection as he could see just how useful it would be.

In the early afternoon, Tonks left to go collect her parents, while Harry finished off the exercises he was working on with Salazar.

It was about 10 minutes after Tonks had left that Harry realised he had made a huge mistake and, with the spirit of the founder chasing after him trying to work out what was going on, Harry rushed downstairs and out of the door heading towards the gate.

He had just remembered that the portkey Tonks had taken to bring them back with would bring them to just outside the main gates. This meant that Harry would have to get there before they arrived as, as soon as they crossed the boundary, if not accompanied by a Potter, his animal guardians would treat it as an attack on the house and respond none too kindly.

Harry quickly explained this to Salazar while he was running across the grounds. As he got near his target, Harry paled. It appeared that the Tonks family had already arrived, and were currently being surrounded by 6 chimaeras, the 3 manticore and a griffin that Harry recognised all too well.

Not knowing what else to do, Harry shouted at the top of his lungs, "STOP!!" as he finally made it to them.

He stood between his three guests and the animals. Seeing that Harry was ok with them being there, the griffin immediately abandoned its threatening posture and came to rub against Harry. The other animals took a bit more convincing but soon relaxed as well.

"Hiya Harry, guess we forgot about this before eh?" asked Tonks weakly.

Absently stroking his winged friend, Harry turned around and faced the three. "Umm…yeah, I remembered a bit after you left…I should have made you one that went straight into the house, sorry about that. Are you all ok?" he asked timidly.

Receiving affirmatives from all, he relaxed.

By this point all but one of the animals had lost interest in the humans and seeing as their master was evidently busy they left.

"Well, Mr. Potter, you certainly know how to give a warm welcome. What on earth are all those beasts doing here? And how did you control them? What's going on?" asked Andromeda Tonks, apparently regaining control of her voice.

As the four humans and one griffin (which left them at the door) made their way towards the main door to the house, Harry and Tonks explained what the deal with the animals was. Her parents were shocked at first, but decided it was best to just accept it. No one got hurt so no need to drag it out.

They went up to the first floor sitting area and began to relax with drinks which Harry quickly dug out.

Speaking to his daughter, Ted Tonks said, "Well Nymphadora, it would seem that at least one of our fears has been alleviated, at least we know that where you are staying is well protected." This statement broke the ice, and everyone was suddenly much more confident now that some of the tension that had been building was alleviated.

"Yes dad. Everything is fine. I'm well looked after and this place is well protected so I'm safe and you can stop worrying." Replied Tonks with a roll of her eyes.

"You'll have to forgive your father, dear. He still seems to be under the impression that you are a small child that needs constant care and supervision. I have tried to convince him that you are a responsible adult, but he seems blind to this fact." Said Andromeda, with a glare at her husband.

Sensing that this was an old argument that he probably shouldn't get involved in if he knew what was good for him, Harry stayed quiet, trying to blend into the background for a while.

After a few minutes of general conversation, Mr. Tonks spoke directly to Harry. "Mr. Potter, is there somewhere I could talk to you privately for a moment?" Though it was phrased as a question, it clearly wasn't one.

Thinking for a moment, Harry replied, "Yeah, ok. This way." He said leading the older man out of the room, towards the office, rather nervously (Tonks muttering "Good luck" to him as they passed didn't exactly reassure him much either).

Deciding that safety was paramount and he was unsure as to the other man's intentions, Harry immediately sat behind his desk, meaning that the large piece of furniture would be between them at all times.

Once Mr. Tonks was settled Harry broke the silence. "What was it you wanted to talk about, sir?"

Before replying, he locked gazes with the young man, "I want to know exactly what the nature of your relationship with my daughter is and what your intentions are." He stated plainly with a hint of aggression in his voice, Ted Tonks had always been very protective of his daughter.

Instinctually, Harry had known that this was going to come, but he was going to get away with saying as little as possible while still satisfying the other man.

"I'm unsure what you mean by the 'exact nature' of the relationship between us, and as for my intentions? That still remains to be seen really." He replied, somewhat unhelpfully, but fully glad that his girlfriend had prepared him to an extent for this.

"What I mean," came the rather frustrated response, "is exactly what I said. What is the nature of it? Are you merely close friends? Is there a physical element? If so, what is the extent there of? Do you plan on staying with her? Or are you going to hurt her? What are your intentions?"

Stunned slightly by the level of detail being asked of him, Harry paused for a moment before replying, "I have no intention of hurting her, now or ever. As to the rest of it, that is between your daughter and myself." Then looking past him towards the door, "If you're going to stand out there listening then you might as well just come in so you don't have to strain yourselves."

A moment later the two rather sheepish looking women walked through the door.

"How did you know we were there?" asked the younger of the pair, glaring at her boyfriend.

"I saw you." he replied, and when it appeared she was about to argue the fact that he couldn't have seen through a solid wooden door, he sent her a look that immediately silenced her.

While this exchange was taking place, the other couple were having a slightly more heated one.

"Good lord, give it a rest! She's happy; can't you just be happy for them?" Said an exasperated Mrs. Tonks to which there was just a mumbled reply that no one in the room could make out. "I fear I must apologise for my husband once again. He will come around eventually, Mr. Potter."

Smiling wanly, Harry replied, "There's nothing to apologise for really. And please, just call me Harry."

"Of course, and you can call me Andy, I don't like formality either." She smiled back at him.

At this point, Tonks spoke up. "Tell you what. Dad, why don't you and me go back into the other room and chat for a bit. Mum and Harry needed to talk about something anyway, and we'd only be sitting here getting bored."

This worked and the two of them left, and suddenly the tension evaporated from the room, and the remaining pair sat down.

"Well, since my darling daughter has decided that now is the right time, I suppose I should get on with it." began Andy. "I know you've only just inherited the Black name, so you must still be sorting out exactly what it means, but as I mentioned yesterday, I want to talk to you about the possibility of my rejoining the family." She paused. "I spoke to Sirius about this matter once, shortly before he was imprisoned, but as he had also been blasted off the family tree he had very limited power and was never instated as the head of the family so had to tell me that although he would if I could; he was simply unable to legally do it."

Harry thought for a minute. It certainly didn't seem like too big a request…after all, she was born into the Black family and only kicked out because they were mostly bigoted bastards. "You'll have to forgive me Andy; I wasn't raised in the wizarding world so a lot of this is totally new to me. What exactly is involved in letting someone back in or kicking someone out of a family? And what does it even mean really?"

Andy Tonks hadn't realised just how out of touch the young man was. It was common knowledge that he had been raised by muggles, but by this point in life she had assumed that someone of his station would have known all about this stuff…she supposed that her daughter had meant it yesterday when she had said that things like this would have to be explained to him from the most basic of levels, and to assume no knowledge what-so-ever.

"Ok, let me see if I can explain this properly." She began. "In the wizarding world, if someone acts in a way that the head of the family thinks will look bad in society's eyes on the rest of the family, then they can disown them. This means that for all intents and purposes they are no longer a part of the family, even to the extent that they are not permitted to use the family name. It becomes a matter of public record if this happens, and because most of the magical world is based around old traditional values, being disowned affects far more than where you live and what you call yourself…you become an outcast in society as a whole. It's been next to impossible for me to find any sort of employment in the wizarding world as most businesses don't want the stigma attached to hiring someone of my status. The only way to undo that is to either be re-instated into the family, at which point it would be as though it had never happened in the first place as far as other people are concerned, or another pure-blood family could accept me, and I would then gain whatever position in society that family held. Also, unless it was specifically indicated to the contrary, my inclusion in a family would also make Nymphadora and to a lesser extent Ted, a part of it. Does that make sense?"

Harry took a moment to run it back through his head, he thought it was a rather stupid system, but realised that it was just another one of those things in the wizarding world that if you grew up with seemed perfectly logical, otherwise it seemed archaic and laughable.

"I think I get the basic idea of it, yeah, thanks for explaining. Now, not to put too fine a point on it, but was the only reason you got the boot, the fact that you married a muggleborn?"

"Yes. My marriage and the fact that I refused all arranged ones, was considered a great insult to family honour…what little existed by that point in the first place…and as such they wanted nothing to do with me after that." She replied.

"Ok. Sorry for having to ask, but I was just making sure I'd been told the whole reason and you hadn't gone on a rampage murdering everyone in your path or something." Harry explained with a grin. "Well, although I have absolutely no idea how to do it, I see no problems with you being part of the Black family again."

Smiling brightly and sighing with relief after all these years, Andy said, "Thank you, you've no idea how much that means to me. All that needs to happen to make it official is to fill out a couple of forms, one for Gringotts and one that goes to them and then on to the ministry…I can fill most of it in and you'll just have to check it, fill in a couple of sections and sign them."

Harry agreed to this and then asked her, "It seems there is a hell of a lot I've still gotta learn about all the pure-blood rules and formalities and the functions of families and stuff. Do you know if there's a book or something I could read to find out at least enough to get by?"

Looking thoughtful, she replied "Yes, there are quite a few on that sort of subject. Do you have a library here that I could have a quick look through to dig some out for you?"

Grinning, Harry pointed to the door through to the library, and stood to follow her, openly laughing at the shocked look on her face when she saw how big it was. "Well, I wouldn't recommend searching the whole library for them…but feel free to look around if you want. Also, if it's not too much trouble I could do with something on the basics of the Wizengamot and how it works…I'm kinda supposed to be joining it the day after tomorrow and have no idea what they actually do except the trials bit." He finished with a self-deprecating half smile.

Approximately 20 minutes later, Harry and Andy left the library and he put the books she had suggested on his desk for later. It turned out that although she had been kicked out of the upper-class wizarding society many years earlier, she had still managed to keep up with most of what had been happening and who was doing what, so the advice she gave him while they were looking for the books would probably prove invaluable.

They returned once more to the sitting room where the other pair were still sitting and talking. Tonks made room for Harry to share the sofa she was sprawled out on before curling up next to him, and Andromeda sat in one of the comfortable chairs.

Ted was the first one to break the silence a minute later. "I'm sorry for the way I acted before Harry. It's just that no matter how big she gets, Dora will always be my little girl, and I can't help but be very protective of her. I know we got off to a bad start, but I hope that we can at least get to know each other…even though as a parent it is my duty to let you know that if you hurt her I will have to kill you, I hope you understand that." He finished seriously.

To this, he got the most unexpected of responses. Harry laughed loudly. "Well, it's good to know where I stand at least…but you should know, I really don't plan on hurting her in anyway, and if I did, do you actually think there would be enough of me left by the time she was done with me for you to be able to even see, let alone kill?" He asked, wrapping an arm tightly around the woman next to him, who was currently sticking her tongue out at him.

"Anyway, enough of that…So, mum? Did he deem you worthy enough to get back into the Blacks?" Asked Tonks mockingly, as her mother had been anxious about being rejected again, but Tonks knew Harry would be fine with it.

"Yes, he did, thank you dear. In fact he was rather nice about the whole thing…unlike a certain taunting daughter I know." She mock-glared in response.

"Really? I have _no_ idea who you mean."

They talked for a couple more hours, in which time Tonks got caught up on what her parents had been doing and they and Harry got to know each other a bit, before they had to go as they had other plans for the evening.

After they had a quick meal, Harry and Tonks went into the office area as they wanted to do some preparation for the following day.

Harry had no idea what Director Bones wanted so he couldn't prepare for that, however tomorrow was also the day they had arranged to meet the Order members who were considering defecting…and that one they did need preparation for.

"Ok, so how are we going to tell if they're actually wanting to help or just playing along to get info for Dumbles?" asked Harry.

"Well…" began Tonks thoughtfully, "the ideal thing would be Veritaserum, but that's heavily controlled so unless you've got a bottle laying around somewhere it's probably not gonna be possible. Other than that, your next best bet is Legilimency…but some of them are really good at Occlumency…" she trailed off.

Harry chuckled at this. "What's the shelf life on the truth potion?"

"Umm…about 80 years or so…why?" asked Tonks, perplexed.

He smiled. "Because I do actually happen to have some 'laying around somewhere' as you put it, and wanted to make sure it wouldn't have become a poison or something since it's been here since my parents lived here."

"Oh." Was her response, then "Will there be enough to do everyone?"

By this point they were walking down to the potions room. Once inside Harry went straight to it and looked at the 6, 10 litre, drums of it.

"Yup, I think there might be about enough…unless you were planning on having them telling the truth for the rest of their lives anyway." Harry said cheekily.

Tonks was amazed at how much there was, this was slightly more than the ministry stockpile of the potion by the look of it. But considering Harry's mum was supposedly one of the best brewers around at the time, and they had practically unlimited financial resources, it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that there were things like this around still.

Since the first problem was solved, they then began discussing what questions to ask, while on the way back upstairs.

Eventually they decided to weed out spies planted by anyone; Dumbledore, Voldemort and the ministry, since they knew that there were some for each in the order but not who they were.

After a while, and several piles of scrap parchment, they came up with the following list of questions to ask:

Are you still loyal to the order of the phoenix?

Do you work for Voldemort?

Are you here to gain information about what we are doing for someone else? If so, who?

Were you involved in any of the crimes committed by Albus Dumbledore against Harry Potter?

If the person could answer 'no' to all of those then they would be trusted. If however the answer was yes to any of them then it would be taken on a case by case basis, for example if they were involved in some of Dumbledore's schemes but only in a small way or unknowingly then they could probably be trusted as well.

They talked for a while about who was going to be there, as Harry didn't know everyone in the order, many of them were unknown to him, and others were people he only knew in passing.

Eventually, they felt as though they were prepared as much as possible. Harry decided to have a read of some of the books he had got from the library earlier, and seeing what they were and how boring it would be, Tonks said she was going for a long soak in the bath and for Harry to "Have fun with that."

For the next several hours, Harry read about various aspects of wizarding society and law. He was outraged at just how many clearly discriminatory laws there were for muggleborns, half-bloods from non-influential families and especially "part-humans" such as werewolves, vampires and other such species.

When his eyes started to stop focusing and his brain no longer cared about what he was reading, Harry decided he's had enough of that for the night and made up his mind to go outside and get some fresh air.

He made his way downstairs and out of the door, just wandering aimlessly around the grounds.

After about 20 minutes, he came to the edge of the trees marking the forest. At this point he sat down, leaning against one of the larger trees, staring off into space and practicing a mental exercise to clear his mind and order his thoughts.

Before too long, he began to relax once more.

Soon after he had completed this, he was looking up into the sky and saw the graceful form of the griffin flying lazily towards him.

This made him smile. He knew that sooner or later his new found friend would show up to keep him company. In fact he had come to appreciate the time spent with him, as the large animal had a strange calming effect upon Harry.

When it landed it came and rubbed against Harry, before settling down to his side, not very far away.

Over the past couple of days, the teen had thought a lot about the fact that this creature wanted to bond with him. At Tonks' behest, he had read a book explaining exactly what that would mean for him if he accepted. All in all it seemed like a very advantageous arrangement for both of them. The only part that would possibly be problematic was that after the connection was formed, they would have to spend the majority of the time for the next couple of weeks together in order to strengthen it properly…and since Harry seemed to be having to go to a lot of places, that might be a problem…after all this was a griffin not a cat or an owl, he wasn't sure if he would be able to take it with him to all these meetings that he seemed to be ending up with somehow.

Seeming to realise that Harry had made his decision, the griffin walked over and sat in front of Harry, facing him.

The process was very simple, all Harry had to do in order to accept the offer made was to look into the creature's eyes and extend his consciousness into its direction, and it would take over from there.

So Harry did just that. Immediately afterwards, he felt a foreign but strangely comforting presence in his mind.

"_Hello my friend. I am glad that you have accepted my offer. I assume you can now hear me?"_ Came a deep voice in Harry's head. He now realised exactly what was meant by the "mental communication" that he had read about.

Focusing on sending the message back along the link, Harry replied, "_Yes, I can hear you. What is your name?" _He asked.

"_I am called Apollo. Tell me, how much do you know about the joining?"_

Harry thought for a moment. _"Not much, Apollo. I know that it is permanent, and that it allows us to draw strength from each other. The information I read about it also mentioned that we would have to stay together almost all the time for the next couple of weeks…do you know exactly how far the maximum distance we can be apart is for it to still be working and what the most time we can separate for is? It's not that I want rid of you or anything" _he continued, not wanting to give the wrong impression _"it's just that I sometimes have to go places that it might not be possible for you to."_

"_I understand what you mean young Harry. I know that the world of magic must be kept hidden so if you went into the non-magical world I could not accompany you. However, I do know the information you seek. Until the bond is fully formed, we should be within 100 of your metres for it to strengthen. We can be apart short periods of time without too much damage to the connection, but no more than 30 minutes at a time is advisable."_

For some time, they discussed the arrangements that would have to be made for the coming days, as well as starting to get to know each other a little.

It was agreed that Harry would convert the room next to the one he and Tonks slept in, into something suitable for Apollo to use. This way they could both be comfortable while still within close enough proximity.

Harry also decided that he would check either later that night or in the morning to see if familiars were allowed in the ministry building, as he had to go there the following day to meet with Bones and the day after for the Wizengamot meeting, both of which he anticipated would take quite some time.

Before they knew it, it was almost completely dark out, at which point they agreed it was time to return to the house.

While doing this, Harry had the treat of riding on his new companion's back while in flight for the one and a half miles back to the door. It was a strange sensation, nothing like he imagined, he had thought it would be somewhat like flying a hippogriff, but it was in fact a far smoother ride. He looked forward to repeating the experience in the future.

Luckily, this was a very large house that was made a long time ago, as such the doorways were far wider than needed for a human and therefore the griffin was able to walk through them without too much difficulty.

They went upstairs to the top floor of the house, Harry pointing out what was where on the way, and into the bedroom closest to the master room.

The first thing Harry did was vanish the room that separated the bedroom and bathroom, providing a much larger area.

"_Ok, so what do you want me to do to make this more comfortable for you?"_ Harry silently asked.

For the next 10 minutes, Harry they made several major changes. The furniture and bathroom appliances were vanished; the floor was divided into two rough halves. One made to mimic grassland and the other uneven rocky terrain. The windows and part of the wall with them on was also removed. A complex form of permanent shield charm was erected in their place, allowing physical objects (such as Apollo) in and out but blocking the elements from entering the house, and at the same time being strong enough to keep the walls around the openings from falling to pieces.

"_Thank you Harry, this will be a most suitable home for me. I sense that tomorrow will be a long and busy day, so if it is not too inconvenient, I will rest. Goodnight my friend."_

At this, the young man took his leave, going into the room next door and heading to the bathroom, where he found Tonks must have asleep in the bath earlier.

Once undressed, he walked over and gently woke her.

"Hey, are you ok? Mind if I join you in there?" he asked softly, smiling down at his girlfriend.

"Hi Harry. I'm ok. Course you can join me, you don't need to ask. What time is it?" she replied sleepily.

Sliding in behind her and wrapping his arms round her, he said, "I'm not sure exactly what time it is but somewhere around 10ish I think." He began softly kissing the back and sides of her neck.

"Mmm, that's nice." She moaned as he slid his hands slowly up her body and cupped her breast in his hands, squeezing gently.

After a minute, Tonks took one of his hands in her own and moved it down between her legs. Taking the hint, Harry began to first slowly rub around the outside and tease her clit and then as she began to grind against him, slipped first one then two and finally three fingers inside her.

By that point Tonks was moaning loudly and grinding her hips against the movement of his hand, forcing his fingers deeper in. This had the added bonus for Harry of making her ass grind against his achingly hard cock.

Soon, while moaning out his name, Tonks climaxed hard, clamping her legs tight around Harry's trapped hand as he continued to move his fingers to the best of his ability and squeezed on her tit, pinching the nipple, trying to bring her as much pleasure as he could.

Once she had recovered, Tonks turned around, straddling Harry's legs, and kissed him firmly on the lips and slipping her tongue into his waiting mouth, to which he eagerly responded.

After a few minutes of that, Tonks pulled back and looked into his eyes. In that moment she made her decision.

Maintaining eye contact all the way, she reached down between her legs and grasped Harry's shaft in her hand, stroking along his length a few times before taking it by the base and positioning the tip it against her entrance.

Harry gasped in surprise, until she smiled at him, reassuring him that it was what she wanted.

Slowly she slid down, gradually taking more and more of his length inside her. They were both moaning in pleasure already.

When she had taken him all the way inside her, she paused for a moment, adjusting to his presence, during this time they kissed slowly and softly but at the same time full of passion and love for each other.

Once she had become accustomed to his size inside her, Tonks began slowly sliding up and down, riding his entire length, almost letting him slip from her warm grasp before forcing him back in completely again and repeating.

Harry slid his hands down her back and grasped one of her buttocks in each, guiding her motion and making her increase the pace.

Before long they were each moaning, grunting and practically screaming each other's names in ecstasy.

Harry turned around and pushed Tonks up so she was laying on the floor, next to the sunken bath, underneath him and began to piston in and out of her hard and fast. She wrapped her legs around him, encouraging him, and pulled him down into a brief, but hot, kiss.

After five minutes of this, Harry could feel the pressure building up inside him. He gave one final thrust as deep into Tonks as he could get and shot stream after stream of cum into her waiting body.

The stimulation from the sex and the thrill of the act itself combined with the sudden feeling of wet warmth spilling into her, pushed Tonks over the edge and she began her own orgasm, the muscles in the walls of her already tight pussy milking Harry for all she could.

Temporarily spent, when Harry came down from his orgasm, he leans down and softly kissed his lover, before lifting her into his arms and carrying her to the bed – casting drying charms on the both of them as he went.

He had barely laid Tonks down and crawled into bed, entangling himself with her, when they both succumbed to the exhaustion of their activities and entered a content, peaceful sleep.


	16. Authors Note

**Author's notes:**

That was the final chapter that I completed in this story. I do have a part of another, but it is in no fit state to be published and is incomplete anyway…and it contains elements that I particularly disliked.

Please let me know what you think of this story and whether or not you would like to see it continued as I am in two minds at this point.

I hope that at least some people out there liked it anyway.

If and when I make a final decision, I will either update this page or make a note on my profile.

Thank you all for reading this story.

**UPDATE (28****th**** June 2009)**

Thank you all for your reviews and messages over the past few weeks. It really was interesting and refreshing to see what you all thought. Please know that even though I didn't reply to them all, I have read each and every one.

I've decided that I will, in fact, continue this story either from the point that I got to or (at this point, much more likely) with several revisions to the current version. This will however NOT be a quick process as for at least a week or two I have a large variety of commitments all over the place that will prevent me from even looking at this for any length of time, therefore an update is probably far from imminent so please bear with me.

Once more, thank you for taking the time to read.

-**Josh**


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